Search Results: ‘when depressions were great’

With unemployment at 8.5 percent, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich finally called it:
This is still not the Great Depression of the 1930s, but it is a Depression.

Are we in a depression? Maybe so, if offhand remarks about the last one now require clarification. During Tim Pawlenty’s substitute-radio-host gig this afternoon on KKMS-AM, a Christian talk station, the governor asserted that religious institutions used to provide the nation’s social-service safety net but have abdicated that role to the government. He asked his [...]

It sounds like a question on a StatShot chart from The Onion: Why are we not rioting? But AlterNet’s Joshua Holland seriously probes why people in Europe and developing countries are taking to the streets to protest the global economic collapse — while Americans, who started it, are not.

This Tuesday, on a day when the federal government announced it will pump a quarter-trillion dollars into our nation’s banks, four of Minnesota’s most prominent economists were by turns caustic and cautionary in their criticism of the federal response to changing financial markets and to the economic crisis that has spread across the globe over the past few weeks.

Here are snippets of news from the Minneapolis papers of 79 years ago, in the days leading up to the stock market crash that ushered in the Great Depression. Today: Waiting to see if the stock market has hit rock bottom; businessmen study art; huge national banks predicted; the world is getting better, pastor says; [...]

What were people doing, thinking and reading about in Minneapolis in the month that led up to the Great Crash of 1929? We’re counting down the days to the Oct. 29 anniversary by dipping into the local newspapers from 79 years ago.
Sept. 29, 1929, fell on a Sunday, meaning a fat edition of the Tribune [...]

Not every scrap of news from local papers in Sept. 1929 was portentous in the days leading up to Black Thursday. This weekend’s selection includes items of general interest not keyed to imminent financial collapse — but that doesn’t mean they’re pleasant: An expert predicts the collapse — of dirigibles; a man falls from a Minneapolis skyscraper under construction; an unmanned balloon lands in “Jugoslavia” with a blood-stained basket; and 60 “negroes” are jailed in Chicago raids. In financial news: Taxpayer refunds from federal surplus are a sign of rising prosperity; business in 1929 will be as good as in 1928; and vague whispers on Wall Street caused a sell-off.

In today’s peek at the local news of 79 years ago, the St. Paul post office could collapse within 30 days — physically, that is; President Hoover backs a tariff law that critics call a monstrosity for the benefit of big corporations; the stock market has grown to a point that would have been unimaginable [...]

In today’s installment of news from Minneapolis newspapers of 79 years ago, the United States treasury has as much as $300 million surplus revenue to give back to taxpayers; non-bank lenders play a big role in loans; a senator bloviates that government favors industry over the masses; former President Coolidge cuts a four-digit check; and [...]

The problem with the current financial crisis is that no one knows what’s going to happen. By contrast, it’s almost comforting to read the news from 79 years ago today. Markets are “reactionary,” trading is “largely professional in character,” and the United States is owed (rather than owes) unfathomable sums of money. It’s ominous, to [...]