Great Depression

The Wacky World of 1932

Any astute reader will ask: “Why in the world would the Foundation for Economic Education publish this sort of thing?” Well, consider the original publication date. Then look at the publisher: The Nation, the leading journal of liberal opinion at the time. Then look at the editor: Henry Hazlitt, author of Economics in One Lesson and a FEE trustee. You might expect, then, that there is a huge backstory here.

A Modern Dust Bowl Would Be Just as Devastating as the Original One

Not sure why I'm featuring Obama's climate failure here? Maybe you can figure it out. (If the video above doesn't play, click here.)by Gaius PubliusI'm presenting this for a different reason than the obvious one. It's not actually a shock-people-into-climate-awareness piece. That's just the set-up. What's my actual point?

The 21st Century Greater Depression

I became interested in the question of how an organization whose business plan is theft can go bankrupt during the Enron debacle. I was well aware that many companies are forced into bankruptcy so that the executives can loot the pension plan and that this has been an accepted business practice for many decades; out of fashion now that there are no pension plans to loot.

What in the World is Going on with Banks this Week?

Emergency meetings, banker summits, crashing European banks, and the worst bank reports since the Great Recession.
Just about every major banker and finance minister in the world is meeting in Washington, DC, this week, following two rushed, secretive meetings of the Federal Reserve and another instantaneous and rare meeting between the Fed Chair and the president of the United States. These and other emergency bank meetings around the world cause one to wonder what is going down.

Yeah, We Had a Ball in the Thirties

Some time ago, Al Jazeera America carried an item by David Cay Johnston with the jaw-dropping revelation that “Americans fared better after the Great Depression than today.” I should mention that Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize winning former investigative reporter for the New York Times who now teaches business, tax and property law of the ancient world at Syracuse University’s Law School, so that’s all you need to know right there.