Day: October 4, 2008

The Depression before The Depression

Scott Reynolds Nelson, a professor of history at the College of William and Mary, finds a precedent for the current financial crisis a little further back in time.

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.

. . .

In fact, the current economic woes look a lot like what my 96-year-old grandmother still calls “the real Great Depression.” She pinched pennies in the 1930s, but she says that times were not nearly so bad as the depression her grandparents went through. That crash came in 1873 and lasted more than four years. It looks much more like our current crisis.

Nelson has the details. Fascinating. Scary.

Sábado, 4 octubre 2008

It’s the birthday

… of gothic author Anne Rice, 67. She is said to have sold 100 million books.

… of Susan Sarandon. The five-time nominee for best actress (she won for Dead Man Walking) is 62 today.

… of Alicia Silverstone, probably not as clueless at 32.

Charlton Heston would have been 84 today. Heston won the best actor Oscar for Ben-Hur (1959), his only nomination.

It’s the birthday of Buster Keaton, born on this date in 1895.

Buster Keaton is considered one of the greatest comic actors of all time. His influence on physical comedy is rivaled only by Charlie Chaplin. Like many of the great actors of the silent era, Keaton’s work was cast into near obscurity for many years. Only toward the end of his life was there a renewed interest in his films. An acrobatically skillful and psychologically insightful actor, Keaton made dozens of short films and fourteen major silent features, attesting to one of the most talented and innovative artists of his time. …

It was this “stone face,” however, that came to represent a sense of optimism and everlasting inquisitiveness.

In films such as THE NAVIGATOR (1924), THE GENERAL (1926), AND THE CAMERAMAN (1928), Keaton portrayed characters whose physical abilities seemed completely contingent on their surroundings. Considered one of the greatest acrobatic actors, Keaton could step on or off a moving train with the smoothness of getting out of bed. Often at odds with the physical world, his ability to naively adapt brought a melancholy sweetness to the films.

American Masters | PBS

Frederic Remington was born on October 4th in 1861. Remington

With his dynamic representations of cowboys and cavalrymen, bronco busters and braves, 19th-century artist Frederic Remington created a mythic image of the American West that continues to inspire America today. His technical ability to reproduce the physical beauty of the Western landscape made him a sought-after illustrator, but it was his insight into the heroic nature of American settlers that made him great. This painter, sculptor, author, and illustrator, who was so often identified with the American West, surprisingly spent most of his life in the East. More than anything, in fact, it was Remington’s connection with the eastern fantasy of the West, and not a true knowledge of its history and people, that his admirers responded to.

American Masters | PBS

Photo of sculpture from Amon Carter Museum.

And it’s the birthday of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, 19th President of the United States. Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, on this date in 1822.

As the Library of Congress tells it:

Rutherford B. Hayes became…president in 1877 after a bitterly-contested election against Democrat Samuel J. Tilden of New York. Tilden won the popular vote, but disputed electoral ballots from four states prompted Congress to create a special electoral commission to decide the election’s result. The fifteen-man commission of congressmen and Supreme Court justices, eight of whom were Republicans, voted along party lines deciding the election in Hayes’s favor.

Worth repeating

“Happiness among American men and women reaches its estimated minimum at approximately ages 49 and 45 respectively.”

National Bureau of Economic Research

First posted here one year ago. Original link via Paul Krugman.

By the way, I’m feeling less gloomy since I burned my gloom in the Zozobra in Santa Fe a month ago. Really! Of course, it could be the recent visit with 5/6ths of The Sweeties® and the upturn in the polls for Obama, but I actually think it’s the Zozobra too.

Using McCain math

Using the same methodology the McCain campaign has used to claim Obama has voted 94 times for tax increases, The Washington Monthly reports that the Obama campaign finds McCain likes taxes even more.

The results were interesting, to put it mildly. According to McCain, Obama voted 94 tax increases since 2005. Using the same methodology, McCain voted for 105 tax increases since 2005. The Republican ticket has some trouble with math, but the last time I checked, 105 is a bigger number than 94.

What’s more, taking this one step further, McCain, using his own standard, has voted for 477 tax increases over the course his lengthy congressional career.