The question of how Economic History has repeated itself has become quite
relevant during this latest economic downturn, an Economic Depression for
millions of Americans.
Many, so called Experts, wring their hands claiming it's a World wide
catastrophe and nothing could have been done to prevent it. To that I say…
"Bulls**t!!!"
Let's talk economic history for a moment. The Great Depression of the 1920s
through World War II was created by wealthy, greedy Americans. It's just that
simple.
Now I realize certain entities will scream foul and throw out figures to
prove my hypothesis wrong, but as my Grandfather used to say "Figures don't
lie…and Liars figure."
Let's exam the cause and affect from a different aspect. Did the factory
worker making $.45 and hour or the Share cropper making $125 a year cause the
depression? Did these ignorant, uneducated and uncaring people pool their
economic clout and send the U.S economy swirling down the drain like dirty wash
water?
I hardly think so. However, had they been organized enough and pulled off a
coup like this, they controlled @ 5% of the nation's wealth. Yep, 98% of the
people had 5% of the wealth while 2% controlled the remaining 95% of the
wealth.
The reason America's economy went belly up is because the wealthy 2% wanted
to control the remaining 5% of wealth left out there, leaving the remaining
Americans in a serfdom world, so they speculated wildly in the Stock Market and
in Real Estate. (sound familiar?)
When the unsustainable bubble popped, the entire economy went to hell, along
with a few other country's as they were major trading partners with the U.S.
The U.S. Government at the time of the collapse realized exactly what had
occurred and in an attempt to protect Joe American Citizen from future ravaging
of their lives, enacted laws and created Government regulators to oversee
critical economic institutions, such as banks.
Fast forward to the last 10 - 15 years. Government watchdog agencies, which
were created in the Roosevelt era, whose sole purpose was to monitor and stop
reckless speculation and immoral ( skimming the edges of illegal) money
manipulation, was for all practical purposes, eliminated.
A watchdog agency with no teeth, no ability to enforce corrective measures
when it sees flagrant violations, is worse than having no agency because it
creates the illusion someone is watching the fox in the hen house when they are
not.