2010-07-15

Compare the depressions

Five Things You Need to Know: The Modern Stealth Depression Revisited
It took a little more than two full years, December 11, 1931, before the New York Bank of the United States would collapse. Surely that would rattle a few cages. Well, no cover play. That was reserved for Dr. James Henry Breasted, "foremost Egyptologist of the US," but the bank collapse did garner a story in the Business section, below a piece on Lorillard Co., then in the news as "the only major industrial concern in the US to resume dividends in 1931."

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph -- what is wrong with these people? Haven't they even the vaguest sense of the impending doom they face? Someone should warn them. They're headed straight into a vicious buzz saw. It's like watching drunken sheep follow one another off the Cliffs of Moher.

On January 22, 1932, things turned desperate. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was formed to dole out government aid to banks, railroads, farm mortgage associations, and all manner of failed business enterprises. By any decent measure of journalistic standards, this deserved top billing in a weekly newsmagazine. So Time's cover story on playwright Philip Barry's eleventh play, "The Animal Kingdom," comes as a sharp, kneecap-shattering nightstick blow.
Fast forward to today. Alex Jones complains that Americans are distracting themselves with TV, athletes and celebrities in
LeBron Nation: Americans Hypnotized As Country Collapses

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