Quote of the Day: "Katie bar the door..."

Art writes in comments on the "History of the Great Depression" post:

It was not until the 1980s that I started learning the realities of the causes of the Depression. As near as I can tell, anybody who disagreed with the Official Version was treated just like today's scientists who are unconvinced that Homo Sap's CO2 is a major cause of climate change.

We had a similar problem in the late 1970s with the loose money of the LBJ-Jimmy Carter era, but Volcker's efforts at the Fed gave us a short-term but deep correction. After him, though, Greenspan et al put us back on the trail of loose credit and easy money.

It appears to me that Obama and the more liberal Democrats and RINOs have bought into the conventional wisdom as to the causes and solutions for the Depression, as they look at today's debacle. After all, they've already committed some two trillion dollars we don't really have--and more tax dollars to come (or go).

Sometime next spring, look for a resurgence of protectionism, ala Smoot/Hawley. If that happens, it's Katie-bar-the-door for the following half-dozen or ten years.

And I haven't even mentioned our coming problems with electric power and transportation fuels.

Odds are, cities are gonna be seriously bad places to live.

Art

Art's one of the savviest people I know. I hope to Vishnu he's wrong on this one, but I have a bad feeling he may not be. Look up Smoot-Hawley. Google the stalled Doha talks, and the sticking points on agricultural trade barriers...