Interesting Enron article

Oh, BTW, I didn't mean puny, adjusted-for-inflation type inflation. I meant something more...Weimarish? Hence, bullion (which I am NOT buying)

BTW as well...why won't the Mint sell bullion directly to the public? All sales have to go through their network of dealers. They WILL sell proof sets and commeratives directly, just not bullion.

 

A canard. Do the research and I think you'll find that Hoover was quite the interventionist. FDR was going to get the government off our backs but seems to have been a tad insincere in that.

 

Nosborne:

You are correct in noting that capitalists RISK THEIR CAPITAL, but I'm not so sure that one must pay FULL-TIME attention to their stock portfolios, as most people simply don't have TIME to spend 24/7 swapping stocks one the Net, unless you're one of them day traders, for chrissakes. Now, that said, I do think people could actually have the intelligence to learn how to read a financial statement and then actually read same. Thus, hypothetically speaking, if you and I were at some ritzy snob-type cocktail party and I asked if you knew of any hot stock tips and you said, "One word, Heiks: Enron," then it would be my own darn fault were I to run out and buy Enron stock without putting any further thought or research into it. The problem comes in when certain companies, like Enron, cook the books and then certain accounting firms, like Arthur Anderson, give their rubber stamp to such shenanigans.

 

I DID do the research. Hoover started a couple of good sized projects, including the misnamed Hoover Dam, and he actually started the RFC but nothing on the scale of the New Deal. Things literally got worse and worse UNTIL FDR came in. Then, and ONLY then, did things begin to improve.

I am not suggesting that everything FDR did helped. Even HE didn't think so; his instructions were to "Try something. If it doesn't work, try something else. Above all, TRY SOMETHING!"

Also, the country was in a revolutionary mood. I am not sure that we would have come through it without vigorous efforts to get people working at wages that would allow feeding one's family. The pure market approach failed. That's what brought the Depression on in the first place.

The reason I am so passionate about this is that the neoconservatives are bound to take this study and use it in an attempt to discredit everything that the New Deal accomplished. That's not only not fair, it's simply wrong.

 

In my best Robert Byrd tone: I must demur, suh.

Keeping us in depression for a decade was hardly an improvement.

You're on to something with the revolutionary mood thing. Anti-liberal forces had been for some time building and gained some traction during the Depression. In Fog of War, Robert McNamara began to say the same but backed off a bit.

The pure market approach was never in effect. Certainly not from the infamous year of 1913 onward.

 

1913? What? The anti-trust act?

 

Could 1913 refer to the Federal Reserve System?

 

Oh, I bet that's it. A singularaly useless institution.

Probably the SOLE significant banking reform to come out of the Deparession was federal deposit insurance. FDR hated it; the economists hated it; the moralists hated it...but there hasn't been a bank run since on an insured institution. MUCH more important to confidence and stability (and honesty due to FDIC audits) than the Fed.

Well, maybe the now foolishly abrogated Glass-Stiegel Act.

 

And the 16th amendment. And the 17th.

 

"Sobriety. The growing curse of middle America. NEXT: On NOVA."

 

Ah, the 18th amendment. It brought prosperity to my people and yours. Would we even have The Sopranos without it?

 

Nah! The 21st amendment, which repealed the 18th, brought prosperity.

 

Thash wha' ee meant. (hic)

 

I'm sure you're right but there are arguments on the other side. Where immigrant groups were kept out of good bootstrapping jobs the fringes of the criminal world provided opportunity. In the northern urban areas, that is. Similar, non-ethnic situations (moonshining, for instance) have existed elsewhere. Sounds like good meat for sociological studies.

 

Sure, Las Vegas Nevada was established as a liquor, gambling, and prostitution center by a Jewish gangster, right?

 

He shoulda stayed away from that shiksa who got him offed.

Nevada laws were what the were and Vegas was there but he started what made it what it is. If he could have dodged the bullet for another year he could have squared things with his "bankers" and retired well.

 

Now I remember! Benjamin "Busgy" Siegel was the man!