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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Crystal ball who wrote (28423)	8/25/1999 11:36:00 PM
From: MeDroogies	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

Well, you've played your hand poorly, and it's clear that you haven't done your homework. The Fed has been in existence for much longer than post WWII. You can make claims on its "modernity", but its role is essentially unchanged. It set interest rates back then, it sets them now. It manages the flow of money now, and it did then. In fact, the Fed chairman at the time carried on a lengthy writing campaign w/his counterpart in England during which they formed a self-supporting cycle of mismanagement - both urging their respective governments to balance the books and hoard gold, while they believed they should keep interest rates high. The crash DIDN'T occur simultaneously, and you can point to a million things that make it SEEM like it did, but it just wasn't apparent until it hit the wealthy people. As you point out, a depression means different things to different people. As a result, we all seem to think the Depression started with the Crash of '29. Of course, this has been disproven time and again. The reason we believe it is because that's when it hit people with "REAL" money. Your pre-1900 history is fairly accurate, but has little to do with, or explain, any pre 1900 crashes - except to point to the outmoded "imbalance of wealth" theory of crashes. Your view that the Depression was caused by any single item or act is so off balance in the face of modern economic theory. It's like saying that final grain of sand that landed on an unstable pile of sand "caused" the landslide. Technically, you MAY make a case for it. But when you study the effects of all the sand grains prior to its arrival, you realize the arrival of that grain DIDN'T do anything that wasn't set up prior to its landing. The pile most likely would've collapsed in a moment or two anyway. But that grain hastened its arrival - or made it more apparent - or made it worse than it would have been. But it in no way caused it.