Are we condemned to relive the Great Depression?
October 17, 2011 Leave a comment
It was actually philosopher George Santayana who said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Joe Nocera, writing in the New York Times, gives the phrase several new references.
The tragedy of Washington today, as the supercommittee begins its task of finding $1.2 trillion in cuts, is that nobody seems to remember the lessons of “Since Yesterday” — and most other books about the Great Depression.
Cutting deficits always sounds good. Certainly, nobody wants the inflation that runaway deficits can produce. But in a depressed economy, cutting spending can lead to deflation, which is every bit as ruinous. To read “Since Yesterday” at this particular moment — with the economy hanging in the balance, with President Obama’s jobs program already voted down in the Senate, with fiscal policy so stubbornly focused on the wrong things — is to fear that we are headed for worse times ahead, not better times.
And does anyone really think that history – or any form of book learnin’ – is going to inform the current GOP, bent only on destroying the sitting administration and willing to destroy the country to do it? One of the side effects of so completely demonizing Obama is you begin to believe that anything you do to beat him is worth it.
Read the rest here: The 1930s Sure Sound Familiar – NYTimes.com.
