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A column by Gary Webster |
Sometimes, it pays to be late with an essay. I'm under no obligation to admit this, but the essay you're reading is almost two weeks late, and I'm glad it is. Had I submitted this month's commentary on time, I would've missed out on the news story that fell in my lap today. Actually, it didn't fall in my lap. I saw it in the computer at work. And if I had already written January's essay, I would've saved this one for February. Unless, by February, the problem has miraculously disappeared, as we all hope it does.
I've been fascinated by presidential politics for as long as I can remember. The election of 1932 is of particular interest. What I find most interesting is the fact that the incumbent, Republican Herbert Hoover, somehow managed to convince more than fifteen million people to vote for him in the midst of that period in our history known less than affectionately as "The Great Depression." For those not historically inclined, the conditions that existed during "The Great Depression" are eerily similar to those that exist today. Shortly after Hoover rode a wave of prosperity into the White House in 1929, the stock market crashed and 25% of the country's work force found itself not working. . .unless you count selling apples for a nickel on street corners working, and that was the method many Americans turned to in order to support themselves when their jobs were yanked out from under them and their banks collapsed, taking their hard-earned money with them. Sound familiar? I've always wondered where they found all those apples. Apple farming must've been one of the few businesses making a profit.
Hoover insisted from the moment the stock market crashed in October of 1929 that "prosperity is right around the corner." He firmly believed that the government should keep its grubby hands off the economy and turned a deaf ear to pleas from the unemployed and the underemployed to do something. Oh, he slapped a band-aid on an economy in need of organ transplant surgery, which was why he was booted out of office by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. Historians still debate how effective Roosevelt's "New Deal" was in ending "The Great Depression," but at least he did something. Depositors whose banks recently failed still have their savings because of the Federal Deposit Insurance Company, one of the many reforms instituted by FDR.
So, here we are in 2009, one week away from inaugurating a Democratic president who promised to do something about the "sluggish economy." That's the term the media likes to use to describe the economic crisis. The word "depression" has been mothballed for eternity, even though there's no better way to descibe an economy that lost more than two million jobs last year. Most analysts say the bleeding won't stop anytime soon, which is why our new president has proposed spending a trillion dollars to "jump start" the economy.
The last time we struggled through serious economic woes, in the early 1990's, I used to drive past a billboard on my way to work each morning that suggested a simple method of ending the recession. SPEND A BUCK TODAY, said the billboard, END THE RECESSION TOMORROW. Where that buck was supposed to come from, for those who weren't working or who were underpaid, such as yours truly, the billboard didn't say. Hey, whoever paid for that message couldn't be expected to think of everything, could they?
The deep thinkers in the economics department of Northern Kentucky University have the same message for today's consumers. In a story on the Ohio News Network's website, a panel of experts was quoted as saying the recession in the Cincinnati area is likely to linger through the third quarter of 2009 (that's economic talk for through September). They also noted that the sooner consumers start consuming again (in other words, spending money) the sooner the economy will bounce back.
Whoever hands out the Nobel Prizes should award this year's prize in economics to this bunch of Rhodes scholars. Like the folks who sponsored that billboard many years ago, the professors at Northern Kentucky University didn't explain where the consumers were going to get the money to spend to bring the recession to its knees. They just told us to start spending. That's easy for someone with a job to say.
I wonder how the apple business is these days.
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Copyright © 2009 by Gary Webster |
Gary Webster is a northeast Ohio radio personality and freelance writer who enjoys looking on the light side of things. His plays, skits, and essays explore the topics of the day with insight and humor.