As you may have witnessed, there have been a fair amount of comparisons of the current financial crisis with the Great Depression. Recently, I attended a presentation on this topic by the well known American historian Dave Kennedy. In his view, and I agree with his analysis, many of those comparisons are off the mark.
Why? The comparisons [...]
One of my readers emailed this excellent question in response to two of my previous posts, “Abraham Lincoln’s Economic Stimulus Package” and “When Deficit Spending Worked Wonders.” Let me begin with Lincoln and the Transcontinental Railroad, which produced a sizable number of construction jobs that paid reasonably well and a strong multiplier effect.
The problem was [...]
One of the issues that has been debated regarding the pending Stimulus Plan has been concern over how much the proposed spending would add to an already enlarged federal deficit. This is a legitimate concern especially considering that President Bush and his advisors took what was a surplus federal budget and turned it into a [...]
I recently gave a presentation on the political and historical roots of the financial crisis at Moline Public Library. Doing the research on this issues was very valuable. I arrived at a more balanced perspective that tempered my political views a bit. Here’s a slightly shorter version that I recorded. Please listen and let me [...]
The two most perplexing questions about the economic stimulus package that the Obama administration and Congress are working on are:
Will it work?
Where will the money come from?
It is useful to look at historical precedents. What does history tell us about the results of economic stimulus packages? The earliest example that comes to my mind, though [...]
