moon traveller herald

Nobody, wise or unwise, knew or now knows when depressions are due or overdue.–JKG, The Great Crash 1929 I cozied round the fire with two books during the winter. Two books on The Great Depression. One, The Great Crash by John Kenneth Galbraith; the other, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History – and How It Shattered a Nation by Andrew Ross Sorkin. The backdrop for anyone reading these books would probably be the same at most any point at time – a nagging feeling that the stock market is exuberantly closing in on a correction, or worse. And that our common days will see soup at least a little thinner. The always-around-the corner feeling of nearing contagion is sharp just now, as 2025 saw a hellbent parade of investment in Generative AI, with promises but not proof of a big return.  There must be some message to be learned in history, right? The radio stocks of the 1920s bear some likeness to AI, hyperscaler and data center equipment stocks of the 2020s. The era saw...

I am ready to quick now get out of the Depression journalism business. It's funny, I was reading Galbraith's book Halloween and it was near fun - now my endowment is down as much [percentage wise] as Harvard's ... and it aint funny. Pop a top! Do you like the blues? So one more depression post for now to make the triad. What we have here is a comment I put on Floyd Norris' blog - before the election. In those dark days when we - well me anyway - were -was- worrying about chads that would disrupt the Merican democratic swell back against Bush and forward to FDR II. It's a look back at my youth where, if someone scraped some beans off the plate into the garbage dad would say 'you'll spend time in Purgatory for that.' Ahh, the days old good! Here goes... October 31, 2008 1:57 pm Link It seems to me that recent events do bear similarity to aspects of the StockMarket Crash of 1929, if not yet to the Great Depression. Other folks have said this too. I am a so...

At some point the process became apparent. The sky is falling, so if you are in the know and have the pull, you help yourself and your friends. Don’t plan too far ahead. Keep the green churning. People were getting thrown out of work left and right at a significant rate on all strata. The folks reading the Times knew this. But capital - that was the animal that had to be fed. The Treasury Dept now struggled to accomplish the task of hiring people to oversee the TARP. A bridge too far - because it lived and breathed. The breadth of the TARP plan had been continually narrowed. Why? It became much more a case of give the bankers some money and call that relief. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the injections of the capital would be the best bet for stabilizing the financial sector - better than direct government purchases of distressed assets. And, anyway that would be hassle... A story in the Wall Street Journal suggested that buying and moderating assets is just too much trouble. Y...

No one, wise or unwise, knew or now knows when depressions are due or overdue. –JKG, The Great Crash 1929 September 2008 – Who knew? Not the masters of the Economic Universe who lord it over the consumers. When the early waters of economic tsunami began to rise, the Secretary of Treasury proved no more prescient than the telemarketing mortgage hucksterer. And why should it be otherwise? Tweak down the interest rates. Wall Street will applaud and the banks will demur. That’s the formula. It was a familiar pattern. The waves were barely lapping the first steps of the pillared Treasury building –right next to the White House – and more impressive. It all seemed manageable - just work with Ben ‘I wrote a book about the Great Depression’ Bernake, have some trust in the masters of Wall Street - which Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson in his mind had not yet left - and their government shadow organization, which Ben had come to run. Hadn’t they got us out of the Russian-Asian spiral of 199...