Economic Depression: 2008 = 1932?

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via AlterNet's PEEK:



Economic Depression: 2008 = 1932?

Posted by Tom Degan, The Rant at 5:02 PM on September 16, 2008.

Crappy days are here again.





The trillion dollar shit hammer hit the fan yesterday and I'm loving every minute it! How could that possibly be? Aside from feeling personally vindicated, I think that the events yesterday on Wall Street just might be the long-feared cataclysmic meltdown that will finally awaken the comatose American people from their twenty-eight year slumber. Wakey! Wakey, kiddies!

Seventy-six years ago, on the eve of the election that sent Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the White House, President Hoover received the following, very cheeky telegram from an unnamed citizen:

"VOTE FOR ROOSEVELT AND MAKE IT UNANIMOUS"

By that time, the Great Depression which was unleashing such economic horror across the American landscape was already three years old. It's not as if the stock market had crashed less than two months before. In the columns I have posted in the last few months, I have made many references to that campaign of 1932. Forgive me for sounding repetitive, but the parallels are to numerous to ignore. Analogies are literally screaming to be made.

With all that has happened in the last twenty-four hours, you would think that Senator Barack Obama receives a major boost in the polls. We shall see. Recent weeks have seen he and John McCain in a virtual dead heat. The so-called "pundits" have come up with scores of reasons why this would be so, totally ignoring the real and only reason: McCain is white. Obama is not. It's as simple as that.

"The economy is fundamentally sound"
Herbert Hoover 1929

"The fundamentals of the economy are strong"
John McCain 2008

Hmmm. Call in a hunch but I get this creepy feeling that when a politician in 2008 inadvertently paraphrases Hoover in 1929, it's generally a pretty good idea to fold up the tents and go home for a nice, long nap. I'm just waiting for the poor old bugger to proclaim that prosperity is just around the corner. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/99086/economic_depression%3A_2008_%3D_1932/