I think of myself as a smart, well-read fellow. I like to think I’m more knowledgeable than the average American, as evidenced by the fact that I do passably well when faced with Jeopardy questions. I admit that I’m not Ivy League by any stretch of the imagination. (In fact I’m not even a college graduate.) Despite all, though, I’m a bit of an elitist, and I fool myself into thinking that I am (or at least could be) one of The Elite.
Ah, hubris.
If I am more knowledgeable than the average American – hopefully I'm not – then it speaks poorly of all of us Americans. Because I don't really know all that much. Every day I learn more about how little I actually know.
Like many Americans I have failed to learn from history. History, as it was taught to me, was boring. It was about memorizing names and dates, but it was seldom about understanding context and motivation. It was more often about war than it was about economics, despite the fact that war and economics are inextricably intertwined.
I think I am not alone in failing to learn the lessons of history.
According to George Santayana and common wisdom, then, we are condemned to repeat history. And we appear to be repeating history as I write this.
We may not, however, be repeating the mistakes that brought about The Great Depression. Instead we are repeating the mistakes that brought about The Long Depression.
I don’t know that I’d ever heard of The Long Depression until this week. (Did I mention I have failed to learn from history?) Twice this week, though, the subject has been brought up by Andrew Leonard in his excellent blog How The World Works over on the salon.com news website.
In his second piece this week on the subject he links to a piece by history professor (at the college of William and Mary) Scott Reynolds Nelson, in which Nelson claims that The Long Depression “looks much more like our current crisis” than The Great Depression does.
Nelson draws some interesting parallels, and he certainly knows more about the 19th century than I do. I strongly recommend you click the link above to read his piece.
In addition to Nelson's parallels, there's another significant parallel that I see from the paltry reading I've done on The Long Depression in the last 24 hours: The Presidency.
Specifically, a president who was enormously popular early in his two terms, but whose administration was riddled with scandal. Economic policies of the administration in question were contributors to – but not the only cause of – market panics that led eventually to full-fledged market crashes. During his second term the president appeared to be ineffectual, eventually leaving office in something akin to shame.
Here’s a paragraph from Wikipedia with the mystery president’s name removed:
“Although _____ himself did not profit from corruption among his subordinates, he did not take a firm stance against malefactors and failed to react strongly even after their guilt was established. When critics complained, he vigorously attacked them. He was weak in his selection of subordinates, favoring colleagues … over those with more practical political experience. He alienated party leaders by giving many posts to his friends and political contributors rather than supporting the party's needs. His failure to establish working political alliances in Congress allowed the scandals to spin out of control. At the conclusion of his second term, _____ wrote to Congress that ‘Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent.’”
Who is that mystery president? It’s Ulysses S Grant.
If we’re really doomed to repeat history as directly as we possibly have been then what can we look forward to?
Evidently we can expect a disputed election, after which a republican president who failed to win the popular vote will order US troops to fire on striking workers, killing many.
President Rutherford B Hayes, ladies and gentlemen! Evidently he's the kind of leader we could conceivably have in times like these.
Let’s learn from history. Quickly.
One last observation: The Posse Comitatus Act - which I find myself referencing a lot lately - was passed in 1878, just after US troops killed 70 striking workers under President Hayes. I mention this largely because this is another piece of history I'm actively trying to learn - the role of the US military in domestic affairs.
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4 comments:
I doubt that many people had the opportunity to read this post in the two hours or so between the time I originally posted it and the time I significantly revised it. If you did, though, then tell me if I've improved my tone any.
Yes, mistakes were made. Big Ones. But where was the media frenzy of hope when the dow surged up over 900 points in one day?
Maybe the media should concentrate a little less on getting Obama elected and a little more on what's actually happening.
Naaahhhh... That's crazy talk.
Crud, i lost the top half of what i wrote... Okay, so my overall point was that the component of the current crisis you're overlooking is the media's control over the panicky animal "Consumer Confidence".
The media has always played a part in American politics and the American market. That being said, we didn't have sensationalist 24-hour news channels in 1929 or 1873.
We had CNN in 1987 when Black Monday happened, but we didn't have CNN competing with FOX News and MSNBC until 1996. Both of those channels were launched that year.
I'm in favor of competition. It's one of the tenets of capitalist theory. In theory, though, competition usually leads to some kind of rush to the middle. In practice - especially recent practice - we've seen more of a slow movement to the edges.
I guess our media is now long-tailed. I will write more about long-tailedness in general at some point.
Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail
But yeah, although there are parallels between our current economic crisis and past economic crises, it is important to remember that there are also differences. The 24-hour news media environment is certainly one of those differences.
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