JoeSixPack

Coming Soon: Banking Crisis of Historic Proportions

Also, silver was demonetized in 1873, and we were froced onto a gold standard.


On Aug 18 02:46 PM carey_jim wrote:

> I'm glad to hear echoes of financial history in your post. Knowing
> our financial history wont give us a perfectly clear picture into
> the future but without it, we will be like Columbus WITHOUT the defective
> compass he took with him. It didn't work very well, and maybe was
> only a tiny bit more useful than a rabbit's foot, but it got him
> here.
>
> I think the crisis that started in 1873 had a lot to do with the
> economic turmoil produced by the Civil War and Reconstruction. It
> was one of the most corrupt and venal periods of American history
> and, essentially saw the old Gentile Class, who were the class of
> the Founding Fathers and whose wealth was mostly in the form of land,
> replaced by a new rich class who have been in power ever since. They
> are the business class which we now are starting to recognize as
> an oligarchy.
>
> Ironically, it was the same period that saw America draw neck and
> neck with Britain and then surpass it, in 1900, as the world's largest
> economy.
>
> My guess is that we are in a new period where a new class, produced
> by universities, which includes, economists, engineers and other
> people who work with their brains, are in a struggle with the business
> class for control. Since the time of Reagan, the business class has
> denigrated this new class of bureaucrats and intellectuals, with
> a wink and smile from rank and file Americans, but the system that
> has "evolved" is unstable and showing signs of disintegration which
> you are monitoring very closely. (Read: "Lack of effective regulations.")
> Remember that before World War I, almost all Americans did their
> graduate work in Europe. Since the end of World War II, as many Europeans
> now come to the United States for graduate training.
>
> You will notice that the only people who seem to be able to stop
> the disintegration are the intellectuals who are only arguing among
> themselves about the methods but nobody, even the big business leaders,
> seem to think that there is anything wrong with the very fact that
> intellectuals and bureaucrats are taking control.
>
> Ordinary Americans have wrongly identified control by intellectuals
> as "socialism" but in this case, it is closer to that other ugly
> word, "fascism" because corporations are still owned by stock holders
> and, more or less, controlled by CEO's. You should now start to read
> the fascinating history of American economic thought in the 1930's
> which was divided between liberalism, conservatism, socialism and
> fascism. A surprising percentage of Americans admired Hitler, Mussolini
> and Franco during that period.
>
> The trend, however, is for power and control to shift from inherited
> business wealth to bureaucrats trained in elite universities.
>
> History always seems to progress from one crisis to another and financial
> history is no different. We don't go from one class in power to another
> in power without wars, revolutions and social chaos. British history
> has been the least bloody. Hopefully we will follow their example
> and not European history.