Skeets, too true. Even in the years before I ever had a dime to invest (say mid 70s), I recall reading & hearing how a 20s-style mania would not occur again and a 30s style depression could not occur again, thanks to safeguards, etc. I think fundamentally, too many people really could not connect the reality with history and so were doomed to repeat it. Oddly, for all the people I know who have lost much since March of 2000, not a single one has yet acknowledged that it was a bubble and a mania. I don't think it's so much a matter of denial as a matter that, since they have not studied history (i.e. the 20s and 30s), they simply do not understand of what they were a part.
In this month's Sierra Club magazine, Carl Pope penned a piece that summed up nicely what has happened for the past decade (Click "Ways and Means" from here sierraclub.org.
The opening paragraph says much of why it could happen:
"More noted as an economist, John Kenneth Galbraith is also a prophet. In 1966, Galbraith told my college class that once leadership passed to those who had not lived through the Depression, the safeguards installed in its wake would be dismantled. Scandal, crisis, and economic collapses were sure to follow. "Democratic capitalism," Galbraith said, "has institutional flaws but only personal memories."
I would even extend this to the bad air, water, and working conditions of the mid 70s which were worked on but already, after the conditions & quality improved, those safeguards and considerations are now being actively dismantled with little opposition.
--Ben |
