It's Not 1929, but It's the Biggest Mess Since

[kentuck]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/04/AR2007120402186.html?nav=hcmodule

<snip>
It was Charles Mackay, the 19th-century Scottish journalist, who observed that men go mad in herds but only come to their senses one by one.

We are only at the beginning of the financial world coming to its senses after the bursting of the biggest credit bubble the world has seen. Everyone seems to acknowledge now that there will be lots of mortgage foreclosures and that house prices will fall nationally for the first time since the Great Depression. Some lenders and hedge funds have failed, while some banks have taken painful write-offs and fired executives. There's even a growing recognition that a recession is over the horizon.

But let me assure you, you ain't seen nothing, yet.

...more

[Warpy]

1. Housing prices had fallen for ten years before the market crash

which is what made ordinary people such suckers to get in on the stock market bubble on margin, borrowing up to 96% of the face value of the stock, hoping to recoup their lost net worth in their housing and/or farmland. Farm prices had also been low for a decade, with farmers going deeper into debt every year just to keep going, and I'm talking about the ones who weren't devastated by the Dust Bowl drought. Wages had been going nowhere, and the only place one could make any paper profit at all was the stock market. When that crashed, it left people with massive debt and no assets. In that way, the Depression was the bursting of a credit bubble, too, credit that had accrued at the bottom while all the wealth had been concentrated at the top.

That's the parallel we're facing here, and that's why any solution won't involve tinkering at the top, it will have to involve addressing demand side economics starting at the bottom.

That will be the difference between a recession and another depression.

[Double T]

2. We will wish it was ONLY 1929 when the reality of our current economic and financial disaster..........

settles in. The CONServatives did it THEN, and the necCONS have done it NOW.

[aquart]

5. So has any candidate mentioned a vigorous federal jobs program?

Preferably involved in installing solar power nationwide and otherwise greening the country?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

6. seems like a no-brainer, doesn't it?

yet not a peep from any of them. :(

[Double T]

7. C'mon! YOU know the federal jobs programs would be outsourced to a foreign nation.......

using slave wage labor. This isn't 1929, it is and will be far worse lasting many decades.

[slipslidingaway]

9. Dennis has and he mentioned it at the Heartland Forum...

I believe it is at the end of this segment.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x73208

direct link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSvSAspqXfw

[JDPriestly]

11. Yes. John Edwards has.

Our generation must be the one that ends our nation's dependence on oil and ushers in a new energy economy. We need energy independence from unstable and hostile areas of the world, from global warming pollution, and from the old ways of doing business. If we harness American ingenuity to reach for transformative change, we can emerge from the crisis of global warming with a new energy economy that stimulates innovation, brings the family farm back to life, and creates more than 1 million jobs in America's farms and industries. Today, John Edwards called for America to embrace three great goals for this generation:

* Halt global warming by capping and reducing greenhouse gas pollution and leading the world to a new global climate change treaty.
* Create a new energy economy and 1 million new jobs by investing in clean, renewable energy, sparking innovation, a new era in American industry, and life in family farms.
* Meet the demand for new electricity through efficiency for the next decade, instead of producing more power.

As a result of the Edwards plan, by 2025 America will import 7.5 million fewer barrels of oil a day, produce 65 billion gallons of ethanol and other biofuels a year, generate 25 percent of our electricity from renewable sources, and produce more than 2 billion fewer tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year. Within a generation, America's cars and trucks will be virtually petroleum-free.

http://www.johnedwards.com/issues/energy/new-energy-economy/

[Viva_La_Revolution]

3. great quote...

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
Charles Mackay

[aquart]

4. Never heard that quote but I love it.

[nightrider767]

8. Why aren't the candidates talking about this!?! n/t

[tsuki]

13. Some of them are, but the media is financed by corporate America.

What is more important, a national discussion of the issues or the fluff that insures talking heads get multimillion dollar contracts?

[slipslidingaway]

10. K&R n/t

[Hannah Bell]

12. Jobs Programs...

hold up wages.

Can't have that unless things really tank.