The Bigger Bailout

by Poor Elijah (Peter Berger).

I am not a political operative.  When it comes to Presidential elections, I've almost always either voted for the losing candidate or wound up wishing that the candidate I'd voted for had lost.

I'm also not an economist, although degrees in economics and finance don't seem to have helped the masters of the universe in charge of our economy.  Every year I teach my eighth graders about the Great Depression.  We talk about how Americans in the 1920s spent more money than they had.  We talk about the enormous debt they ran up, and how that debt finally caught up with the nation's overheated economy and sank it.  Every year some fourteen-year-old raises his hand and observes, "Isn't that like what people do with credit cards today?"

How can something that occurs to a kid in eighth grade slip past the Federal Reserve and the former CEO of Goldman Sachs?  In fairness, there was more to the Great Depression than excessive personal spending.  Back then people were buying overvalued stocks and other securities with money that didn't really exist.

It would be comical if it weren't so appalling.

http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-11-29-08.htm