{"id":38400,"date":"2018-09-28T06:37:42","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T11:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38400"},"modified":"2018-09-28T06:37:42","modified_gmt":"2018-09-28T11:37:42","slug":"comparing-crises-1929-with-2008-and-the-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38400","title":{"rendered":"Comparing Crises: 1929 with 2008 and the Next"},"content":{"rendered":"

Comparing Crises: 1929 with 2008 and the Next<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

The business and mainstream press this month, September 2018, has been publishing numerous accounts of the 2008 financial crash on its tenth anniversary. This month attention has been focused on the Lehman Brothers investment bank crash that accelerated the general financial system implosion in the US, and worldwide, ten years ago. Next month, October, we\u2019ll no doubt hear more about the crash as it spread to the giant insurance company, AIG, and beyond that to other brokerages (Merrill Lynch), mid-sized banks (Washington Mutual), to the finance arms of the auto companies (GMAC) and big conglomerates (GE Credit), to the \u2018too big to fail\u2019 banks like Bank of America and Citigroup and beyond. These \u2018reports\u2019 are typically narrative in nature, however, and provide little in the way of deeper historical and theoretical analysis.<\/p>\n

Parallels & Comparisons 1929 & 2008<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is often said that the initial months of the 2008-09 crash set the US economy on a trajectory of collapse eerily similar to that of 1929-30. Job losses were occurring at a rate of 1 million a month on average from October 2008 through March 2009. One might therefore think that mainstream economists would look closely at the two time periods\u2014i.e. 1929-30 and 2008-09\u2014to determine with patterns or similar causes were occurring. Or to a deep analysis of the periods immediately preceding 1929 and 2008 to see what similarities prevailed. But they haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n

What we got post-2009 from the economic establishment was a declaration simply that the 2008-09 crash was a \u2018great recession\u2019, and not a \u2018normal\u2019 recession as had been occurring from 1947 to 2007 in the US. But they provide no clarification quantitatively or qualitatively as to what distinguished a \u2018great\u2019 from \u2018normal\u2019 recession was provided. Paul Krugman coined the term, \u2018great\u2019, but then failed to explain how great was different than normal. It was somehow just worse than a normal recession and not as bad as a bonafide depression. But that\u2019s just economic analysis by adverbs.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Comparing Crises: 1929 with 2008 and the Next The business and mainstream press this month, September 2018, has been publishing numerous accounts of the 2008 financial crash on its tenth anniversary. This month attention has been focused on the Lehman Brothers investment bank crash that accelerated the general financial system implosion in the US, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4419,8,5493,1856,15609,496,20202,21963],"class_list":["post-38400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-4419","tag-8","tag-counterpunch","tag-financial-crises","tag-jack-rasmus","tag-mainstream-media","tag-the-great-depression","tag-the-great-financial-crisis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38401,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38400\/revisions\/38401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}