four comments: 1) a housing bubble was one part of the US experience in 1929. It had collapsed earlier, but the debt and overbuilding continued to be a problem. It was localized in Florida, but not completely.
2) the author suggests that the "Gilded Age" started in 1973. Likely that's so, but we've been in a new (and therefore different) Gilded Age since 1979 or so. 3) the collapse of the Doha round is not likely to spark "a new wave of protectionism" as much as a slowing of movement toward increased free trade. The latter may be bad (it's a matter of opinion) but it doesn't spark the collapse of world trade the way Smoot-Hawley did. 4) it's wrong to see either 1929 or 1873 as the "model" of what's happening today. (History does not repeat itself.) Instead, we can learn from both. > The Chronicle of Higher Education The Chronicle Review > > http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i08/08b09801.htm > > From the issue dated October 17, 2008 > The Real Great Depression > > The depression of 1929 is the wrong model for the current economic crisis > > By SCOTT REYNOLDS NELSON > > As a historian who works on the 19th century, I have been reading my > newspaper with a considerable sense of dread. While many commentators on the > recent mortgage and banking crisis have drawn parallels to the Great > Depression of 1929, that comparison is not particularly apt. Two years ago, > I began research on the Panic of 1873, an event of some interest to my > colleagues in American business and labor history but probably unknown to > everyone else. But as I turn the crank on the microfilm reader, I have been > hearing weird echoes of recent events. -- Jim Devine / "Nobody told me there'd be days like these / Strange days indeed -- most peculiar, mama." -- JL. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
