Even though the topic isn’t always pleasant, this blog has helped me to learn more about the past srtuggles and economic conflicts. The Haymarket Srike is one example.
Mort Zuckerman suggests ways for avoid a “deep” recession. The article is from October 2008. I wonder what his views are now.
The inescapable bad news is that a serious recession is inevitable given the damage to the financial sector and the degree to which business and the public have been traumatized. But this does not mean we must spiral to depths rivaling the ’30s. The risks are there, all right, in unexploded financial land mines (those toxic assets) and the unprecedented debt of American families and businesses, though so far, we’ve avoided some of the mistakes of 1929. But much more must be done.
Tips from Bankrate.com from bailing yourself out on groceries, health care, mortgages, utilities bills and more.
And not a moment too soon it seems.
“It’s huge,” said Martha Olney, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in the Great Depression, consumerism and indebtedness. The rapid reversal is even more remarkable, she said, because in recessions consumers usually save less money. Not this time. “It implies a re-emergence of thrift as a value,” she said.
I’m so glad to see MIT and other universities opening up their courses. Free. Sweet.
I’ve heard some whispers that we’ve hit the bottom or that things are getting better. This Economist article suggests that there are times when optimism isn’t a good thing. Robert Reich, too, thinks that we’re not at the bottom yet.
More stories like these are popping up. Sad. Terribly sad.
The man who killed his wife and three young children and then himself in a tiny town in northwest Maryland last week was at least $460,000 in debt and owned a Florida house that was in foreclosure, according to property records and police.
And then there’s the suicide of the Freddie Mac exec.
From SF Gate, four seniors share their Depression era experiences.
Richard Posner, the jurist I most love to read and whom I wish was wrong more than I’m afraid he isn’t, recently made the admission in this Bloomberg podcast that, yep, it’s a “depression”. A review of his recent book in the A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ‘08 and the Descent into Depression, is here in the New York Review of Books, and another review from Huffington Post is here. An interview in the New York Times with Posner is here.
I’m not sure we could (or should) copy this. Still, it is intriguing as a response to the economic decline across industries and countries. The New York Times reports that the young Japanese are heading back to the farm:
Started last month as part of Prime Minister Taro Aso’s stimulus plans, the program stems from growing concern about both the plight of Japan’s younger workers and the dismal state of farms. In a play on words, the squad’s name in Japanese — Inaka-de-hatarakitai — is also its rallying cry: “We want to work in the countryside!”
Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.
-- George S. Patton