Rush Limbaugh Has Balls Of Steele
Mar 3rd
“After decades of running an IV drip right into their...”
— Paul Graham
— Paul Graham
Mar 3rd
Can You Baptize Me In Your Sink?
Mar 3rd
bartcop.com
Mar 3rd
Toilet-Trained Cats Threaten Environment
Mar 3rd
“Santelli’s screed is part of a continuing effort to...”
— Dean Baker
— Dean Baker
Mar 3rd
Watch
Sadly, it’s no joke
Mar 3rd
The Manic-Depressive Market
Mar 3rd
“The biggest problem with broadband service in America is not...”
— Glenn Derene
— Glenn Derene
Mar 3rd
“If you draw the timelines, realistically by 2050 we would...”
— Ian Pearson
— Ian Pearson
Mar 3rd
Rob Rogers
Mar 3rd
Apple Updates Consumer Desktop Line
Mar 3rd
“I know I have become the intellectual engine of the...”
— Rush Limbaugh
— Rush Limbaugh
Mar 3rd
“During the 18th century, Enlightenment ideals began to...”
— Jim Moss
— Jim Moss
Mar 3rd
U.S. rattled as Mexico drug war bleeds over...
Mar 2nd
“There are some Sundays that it is best to not be a new...”
— Bruce Droppings
— Bruce Droppings
Mar 2nd
Tomorrow is Town Meeting Day in Vermont
Mar 2nd
Cantor, Steele repudiate Rush; wingnuts freak out
Mar 2nd
“Some Republicans claimed that Obama’s plan vindicated...”
— Juan Cole
— Juan Cole
Mar 2nd
Consumer spending up, ending slide
Mar 2nd
David Horsey
Mar 2nd
“I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests...”
— President Obama
— President Obama
Mar 2nd
It’s widely agreed that there are a number of...
Mar 2nd
“There are huge corporations who are making a lot of money...”
— Chris Hedges
— Chris Hedges
Mar 2nd
“According to Obama, only the President has the power to...”
— Glenn Greenwald
— Glenn Greenwald
Mar 2nd
Tom Toles
Mar 2nd
“The net effect of the failures in banking is that a lot of...”
— Jim Kunstler
— Jim Kunstler
Mar 2nd
“Obama is requesting $130 billion for wars in Iraq and...”
— Paul Craig Roberts
— Paul Craig Roberts
Mar 1st
“The Republican base is now made up of the religious and...”
— Frank Schaeffer
— Frank Schaeffer
Mar 1st
DanzigerCartoons.com
Mar 1st
CPAC: White kids on dope
Mar 1st
“Other contenders for spots on the most-wanted list of secret...”
— Joe Wiener
— Joe Wiener
Mar 1st
Desperately Protecting A.I.G.’s House of...
Mar 1st
Watch
Japan Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Re-enactment
Mar 1st
Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing...
Mar 1st
“I’ve never seen so much panic around me, but panic is...”
— Bruce Sterling
— Bruce Sterling
Mar 1st
“Half-truths, obfuscations and apparent deceit — these...”
— David Simon
— David Simon
Mar 1st
Watch
Afghanistan + More Troops = Catastrophe
Mar 1st
“Let’s move on with an observation that, in effect,...”
— Chris Crawford
— Chris Crawford
Mar 1st
“Millions and millions of Americans have bought into the lie...”
— DownshoreDrift
— DownshoreDrift
Mar 1st
RJ Matson
Feb 28th
Ubuntu v OSX smackdown
Feb 28th
“Communism aspired to be the universal creed of the twentieth...”
— J.R. McNeill
— J.R. McNeill
Feb 28th
Personal branding in the age of Google
Feb 28th
68% of Americans believe that “Angels and demons are active...
Feb 28th
Wireless Electricity Is Here (Seriously)
Feb 28th
John Sherffius
Feb 28th
Why the Dark Secrets of the First Gulf War...
Feb 28th
Caving into bullies (aka, here we go again)
Feb 28th
“I’d like to see them let these people go bankrupt, let...”
— Jim Rogers
— Jim Rogers
Feb 28th
12 million people in USA still use dial-up
Feb 28th
“So, where did this contemporary practices come from? When...”
— Alan Knox
— Alan Knox
Feb 28th
“So Gerson wants to credit the drop in violent crime in the...”
— Radley Balko
— Radley Balko
Feb 28th
Citing Cost, States Consider Halting Death...
Feb 28th
Rex Babin
Feb 27th
Meet Ray Kurzweil
Feb 27th
“Kurzweil is very specific about when this epic shift will...”
— When Man & Machine Merge
— When Man & Machine Merge
Feb 27th
A World of Grace
Feb 27th
What I've Learned from Hacker News
Feb 27th
Privacy in the Age of Persistence
Feb 27th
“I don’t really understand why Santelli thinks that...”
— slacktivist
— slacktivist
Feb 27th
Malevolent voices that despise our freedoms
Feb 27th
GDP = -6.2%
Feb 27th
“One of the things Christians often seem oblivious to is that...”
— Ben Witherington
— Ben Witherington
Feb 27th
“In exchange for this convenience, though, the Kindle locks...”
— Farhad Manjoo
— Farhad Manjoo
Feb 27th
The 1993 Budget Act
Feb 26th
bartcop.com
Feb 26th
“Arizona is in worse shape than most places because of 1)...”
— Rogue Columnist
— Rogue Columnist
Feb 26th
“But there’s a lot here to like and the Kindle 2 truly nudges...”
— Andy Ihnatko
— Andy Ihnatko
Feb 26th
Comments v. Reblogs (II)
dlifson wrote: What I love most about reblogging is how it is a mechanism for the spread of ideas...
Feb 26th
They let these companies magically turn...
AmEx is one of several credit-card issuers that have closed accounts and increased late fees and...
Feb 26th
DanzigerCartoons.com
Feb 26th
Politicos Love the Twitter
Feb 26th
“…America continues to grow in terms of population, but the...”
— David T. Olson, director of...
— David T. Olson, director of...
Feb 26th
Comments v. Reblogs
Marco wrote: This is exactly the rationale behind using reblogs as a means of debate and...
Feb 26th
Mike Luckovich
Feb 26th
The Joe-the-Plumberization of the GOP
Feb 26th
“The Shack is a metaphor for the place behind a religious...”
— William Young
— William Young
Feb 26th
How I almost killed Facebook
Feb 26th
“In the midst of an economic crisis that’s getting...”
— David Vine
— David Vine
Feb 26th
FiveThirty ... Nine?
Feb 26th
“Simple question: Who was more popular — Robin Hood or...”
— slacktivist
— slacktivist
Feb 25th
The Seven Deadly Sins of my spam trap
Feb 25th
RJ Matson
Feb 25th
Do the Markets Hate Obama?
Feb 25th
“…active labor market policies. This is how Scandinavian...”
— How Should We Support the...
— How Should We Support the...
Feb 25th
Michael Steele is a Nitwit and Wolf Blitzer...
Feb 25th
xkcd
Feb 25th
Reinventing the Kindle (part II)
Feb 25th
“…I think Bobby Jindal is a very promising politician, and I...”
— David Brooks
— David Brooks
Feb 25th
Maine Man Tries to Build a Dirty Bomb
Feb 25th
“Gov. Jindal’s stories of self-reliance were inspiring....”
— Jon Swift
— Jon Swift
Feb 25th
bartcop.com
Feb 25th
“The spectacle of a “reporter,” this Santelli character from...”
— Cocktailhag
— Cocktailhag
Feb 25th
“During Bush’s presidency people like me were called traitors...”
— Sadly, No!
— Sadly, No!
Feb 25th
Benson
Feb 25th
“In other words, we have lived through an era where too...”
— Barack Obama
— Barack Obama
Feb 25th
Media-Morphosis: How the Internet Will...
Feb 25th
“On a contrary note, I have a Kindle 2. I’ve been really...”
— xkcd
— xkcd
Feb 25th
“Mary is not a loser. Mary is a victim of the greed of...”
— Diana Butler Bass
— Diana Butler Bass
Feb 24th
Faithful Are Giving Up Facebook for Lent
Feb 24th
Be Careful Our Children Might Get Even With Us
Feb 24th
“What they miss is the Obama Code. For the sake of unity, the...”
— George Lakoff
— George Lakoff
Feb 24th
Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0
Feb 24th
Watch
Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce
Feb 24th
“I have read endless tributes to Wal-Mart from...”
— Paul Craig Roberts
— Paul Craig Roberts
Feb 24th
Documented: The Decline of America’s Largest...
Feb 24th
The Generational Tech Divide
Feb 24th
“How do Americans view Barack Obama and his relationship with...”
— Scott Horton
— Scott Horton
Feb 24th
We are not called to be calculators and...
Feb 24th
Rich and Poor Still Vote Differently in Red and Blue States
Feb 24th
Laissez-Faire Capitalism Has Failed
Feb 24th
“Blitzer-style lapdog reporting and the 10-second...”
— Josh Silver
— Josh Silver
Feb 24th
Was Jesus a Christian?
Feb 23rd
Benson
Feb 23rd
“Mohler would likely argue that it’s impossible to...”
— James L. Evans
— James L. Evans
Feb 23rd
“Did I ever tell you people how much I hate the word ‘meh’?...”
— John Hodgman (via bryanmckay)
— John Hodgman (via bryanmckay)
Feb 23rd
“In the alternate reality 1980s of Watchmen, Richard Nixon is...”
— Balkinization
— Balkinization
Feb 23rd
Watch
Transcendent Man
Feb 23rd
Calling Technology’s Bluff
Feb 23rd
“The Republican party isn’t exactly Internet savvy....”
— Meghan McCain
— Meghan McCain
Feb 23rd
bartcop.com
Feb 23rd
Singularities and Nightmares
Feb 23rd
“But all the conservatism in the world does not offer even...”
— Marshall McLuhan
— Marshall McLuhan
Feb 23rd
ReadTheBill.org
Feb 23rd
“Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to fully...”
— John Robb
— John Robb
Feb 23rd
“When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way...”
— Gandhi
— Gandhi
Feb 23rd
If Every Life is Sacred
Feb 23rd
“No good, in fact, will come of a campaign to sustain the...”
— Jim Kunstler
— Jim Kunstler
Feb 23rd
Why Kindle Should Be An Open Book
Feb 23rd
“Have we become so jaded that our national conscience can no...”
— The Disputed Truth
— The Disputed Truth
Feb 23rd
How Much House Can You Afford?
Feb 23rd
Americans Growing Kinder to Bud
Feb 23rd
Who will rule globalizations middle class?
Feb 22nd
“But this Rush-Limbaugh/Fox-News/nationalistic movement...”
— Glenn Greenwald
— Glenn Greenwald
Feb 22nd
PostSecret
Feb 22nd
How To: Hackintosh a Dell Mini 9 Into the...
Feb 21st
“One of the more unapologetically idiotic notions being...”
— Nate Silver
— Nate Silver
Feb 21st
Fair and balanced
Feb 21st
“Yet revolutions are rarely seeded by misery. Most are caused...”
— Rogue Columnist
— Rogue Columnist
Feb 21st
Everyone Loves Google, Until It’s Too Big
Feb 21st
bartcop.com
Feb 21st
Fleischer v. Gibbs
jeffmiller wrote: squashed wrote: “I also think it’s extremely important for people who rant on...
Feb 21st
“Perhaps robot ethics has not received the attention it...”
— Autonomous Military Robotics:...
— Autonomous Military Robotics:...
Feb 21st
bartcop.com
Feb 21st
Digital books for your mobile device
Feb 21st
“Obama’s problem is that a growing number of Americans...”
— Scott Horton
— Scott Horton
Feb 21st
“I also think it’s extremely important for people who rant on...”
— Robert Gibbs (via squashed)
— Robert Gibbs (via squashed)
Feb 21st
Steve Bell
Feb 21st
“Police seldom, if ever, prevent a crime. Their job is to...”
— Paul Craig Roberts
— Paul Craig Roberts
Feb 21st
“…we cannot use moral precepts as fundamental principles that...”
— Chris Crawford
— Chris Crawford
Feb 21st
Engaging the Powers
Feb 21st
Boys With Toys
Feb 21st
“Roosevelt’s massive pre-war majorities (a landslide...”
— Daniel Mandel
— Daniel Mandel
Feb 20th
img252.imageshack.us
Feb 20th
“Guided by a literal reading of the prophetic sections of the...”
— Frank Schaeffer
— Frank Schaeffer
Feb 20th
“Digg is such a mess. The 1% of users who control the content...”
— Digg Finally Admits the...
— Digg Finally Admits the...
Feb 20th
bartcop.com
Feb 20th
“The United States has a prison population like nowhere else....”
— John Pfaff
— John Pfaff
Feb 20th
Disappeared in the Name of National Security
Feb 20th
Legalizing Marijuana Now More Popular than...
Feb 20th
“I know a lot of people want to know about Watchmen, so...”
— WWdN: In Exile
— WWdN: In Exile
Feb 20th
Can we talk for a second about just how...
Feb 20th
whatnowtoons.com
Feb 20th
“One of the hallmarks of modern conservatism, at least in its...”
— Paul Krugman
— Paul Krugman
Feb 20th
True Competition a Myth in the Private Health...
Feb 20th
K-12 Teachers Discouraged from Using Social...
Feb 20th
“In a democracy, the two major parties spend the majority of...”
— H.L. Mencken
— H.L. Mencken
Feb 20th
“Socrates rather infamously claimed to know nothing. Thinking...”
— Andrew Tallman
— Andrew Tallman
Feb 20th
xkcd
Feb 20th
The Death of Preaching
Feb 20th
“Your father’s recession was something like the severe...”
— Paul Krugman
— Paul Krugman
Feb 20th
Why We Immunize
Feb 20th
“Human beings are and always have been diversely motivated...”
— Yochai Benkler
— Yochai Benkler
Feb 20th
Tom Toles
Feb 20th
My Web is Text Based
Feb 19th
Politico's *Intense* Internal Memo
Feb 19th
Homes: Still Too Pricey to Stabilize
Feb 19th
The Angry Chimp And Other Lies (II)
Feb 19th
The Angry Chimp And Other Lies
Feb 19th
Tom Toles
Feb 19th
Why Hulu Should Embrace Boxee
Feb 19th
“Many people have not aspired to Jesus’ Third Way...”
— Walter Wink
— Walter Wink
Feb 19th
Things I Think We Think We Know About the...
Feb 19th
Binyam Mohamed, war crimes investigations,...
Feb 19th
penny-arcade.com
Feb 19th
Internet ephemera
Feb 19th
“Washington’s rescue efforts are providing welfare for...”
— Robert Brent Toplin
— Robert Brent Toplin
Feb 19th
bartcop.com
Feb 19th
One Flag Design Competition
Feb 19th
“People talk about a return to Keynesianism, but that’s...”
— Noam Chomsky
— Noam Chomsky
Feb 19th
Hulu's Superbowl Ad and the Boxee Fight
Feb 19th
Benson
Feb 19th
“Ted Kaczynski, the convicted bomber who blew up dozens of...”
— The Unabomber Was Right
— The Unabomber Was Right
Feb 19th
“There’s a place for government assistance, but not in...”
— Rogue Columnist
— Rogue Columnist
Feb 18th
Stray dogs being killed in Baghdad
Feb 18th
“[A] few years ago George Will wrote a column in Newsweek...”
— Noam Chomsky
— Noam Chomsky
Feb 18th
“I submit that the ultimate religious question today is no...”
— Walter Wink
— Walter Wink
Feb 18th
Somnambulism in the Internet Age
Feb 18th
Watch
Hacked Nintendo Wii Balance Board Surfing
Feb 18th
The Joy of Tech
Feb 18th
American Caesar's Ghost
Feb 18th
“Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest...”
— James Madison
— James Madison
Feb 18th
“There was a time in America when the interests of elites...”
— Paul Craig Roberts
— Paul Craig Roberts
Feb 18th
Watch
Juan Enriquez shares mindboggling new science
Feb 18th
“If 9/11 had really changed us, there’d be a 150-story...”
— James Lileks
— James Lileks
Feb 18th
Rob Rogers
Feb 17th
Markoff’s Gated Community Should Die in a...
Feb 17th
“Taxpayers rightly resent the price tag of the prison system,...”
— Anthony Gregory
— Anthony Gregory
Feb 17th
“The economic collapse has exposed the stupidity of our...”
— Chris Hedges
— Chris Hedges
Feb 17th
David Horsey
Feb 17th
Another day, another citizen killed by a...
Feb 17th
“Companies like Microsoft, Google, and my employer trot their...”
— Thomas Friedman, the Pollyanna...
— Thomas Friedman, the Pollyanna...
Feb 17th
“Here’s my idea: A series of NBC News primetime...”
— Jeff Cohen
— Jeff Cohen
Feb 17th
“When I am among evangelical Christians I find that they seem...”
— Culture Making
— Culture Making
Feb 17th
Why a cold winter doesn't mean climate change...
Feb 17th
Billion Dollar Bailout Club
Feb 17th
Draconian DRM Revealed In Windows 7
Feb 17th
“Just to get our bearings, we are in a recession caused by...”
— Dean Baker
— Dean Baker
Feb 17th
How Should We Decide What’s Safe For Our...
Feb 16th
“Gallup says this finding “is perhaps dismaying to...”
— slacktivist
— slacktivist
Feb 16th
For the first time in history more than half...
Feb 16th
Watch
How progress happens
Feb 16th
“Then, in 1979, the Ayatollah tossed out the Shah of Iran, we...”
— Jim Kunstler
— Jim Kunstler
Feb 16th
Gay woman fights over hospital visitation...
Feb 16th
Watch
Money As Debt
Feb 16th
The pace of global warming is likely to be...
Feb 16th
What will Web 3.0 be?
Feb 16th
“Imagine it’s the year 3000 and you’ve just done...”
— Vint Cerf
— Vint Cerf
Feb 16th
DanzigerCartoons.com
Feb 15th
Why Aren't All the Nixon Tapes Now Available?
Feb 15th
“It is time for Christians to speak to America about our real...”
— Howard Bess
— Howard Bess
Feb 15th
“Congress passed the economic stimulus bill, despite the...”
— Chris Crawford
— Chris Crawford
Feb 15th
Watch
Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity
Feb 15th
Attack of the Killer Robots
Feb 15th
“Our most certain military threats come from weather chaos,...”
— David Korten
— David Korten
Feb 15th
Internet Killed the Satellite Radio Star
Feb 15th
“This G.O.P., a largely white Southern male party with...”
— Frank Rich
— Frank Rich
Feb 15th
“Nature is wise and far-sighted. Wall Street is greedy and...”
— David Korten
— David Korten
Feb 15th
rjmatson.com
Feb 14th
“There is, for obvious reasons, extreme anger among the...”
— Glenn Greenwald
— Glenn Greenwald
Feb 14th
“Think of it like this, our taxpayer money is ensuring their...”
— Simon Johnson
— Simon Johnson
Feb 14th
“Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is...”
— James K. Galbraith
— James K. Galbraith
Feb 14th
“How have we gone from a beheaded priest to a giddy worldwide...”
— V-Day: An Arrow in the Heart
— V-Day: An Arrow in the Heart
Feb 14th
Lynching, Polling
Feb 14th
“As this living arrangement becomes unaffordable for all...”
— ClubOrlov
— ClubOrlov
Feb 14th
A record 1 in 9 U.S. homes are vacant
Feb 14th
“To understand the mechanics of this attempted swindle, you...”
— William Greider
— William Greider
Feb 14th
The Michael Phelps Witch Hunt Gets Surreal
Feb 14th
“How do you come up with a “bi-partisan compromise” with a...”
— daggatt
— daggatt
Feb 13th
“From October 2007 through October 2008, the Phoenix area...”
— How the Crash Will Reshape...
— How the Crash Will Reshape...
Feb 13th
Apple Says iPhone Jailbreaking is Illegal
Feb 13th
It is 150 years since the theory of evolution was unveiled,...
Feb 13th
“…one of the interesting things that I discovered in the...”
— Harry Lewis
— Harry Lewis
Feb 13th
The Prison Industrial Complex is just as...
Feb 13th
Heroes and Villains
Feb 13th
“As with tax cuts, we have actual real-life experience with...”
— Rogue Columnist
— Rogue Columnist
Feb 13th
“The threat from micropayments isn’t that they will come to...”
— Clay Shirky
— Clay Shirky
Feb 13th
Happy 1234567890!
Feb 13th
On the Media: NSA monitored domestic...
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The agency had access to all Americans’ communications, but Tice said they targeted individual journalists and news organizations. Many had suspected as much. In 2006, a group of journalists tried to sue the NSA to find out if they were being spied on. The suit was dismissed.One reporter who was sure he was being monitored was Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower - Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. His first clue came from one of his sources in the intelligence community who told him he'd read a summary of a phone call Wright had made to the Middle East. Later, two federal agents showed up at his door with questions about another phone number he'd called.
LAWRENCE WRIGHT: And they wanted to know, first of all, who was it? I looked it up on my Palm Pilot and it belonged to a solicitor in London who represents some of the Jihadis that I had been interviewing for my book.
And then they began asking if the person on our end of the call, my end, was named Caroline. And that’s my daughter’s name. And they asked, you know, is her name Caroline Brown? And I said, no, she’s, you know, a student at Brown. But I said, her name’s not on any of our phones. How do you know this information? Are you listening to my calls? And they just shut their briefcases and left.
I thought, as an American citizen, that the law was that they would not be listening to my calls unless they had a warrant. And I thought it was very unlikely that they would be able to obtain one because I'm a legitimate reporter.
But a year later, there was a New York Times story breaking the news that there were illegal wiretaps on American citizens, and I realized then what was going on.
Feb 13th
WhatTheFont for iPhone
Feb 13th
Mikhaela Reid
Feb 13th
Troubled Neighbor: Mexico's Drug Violence...
Feb 13th
“It is incomprehensible that any informed economist does not...”
— Jesse’s Café Américain
— Jesse’s Café Américain
Feb 13th
India to launch cow urine as soft drink
Feb 13th
Steve Greenberg
Feb 13th
Unix's Magical Moment
Feb 13th
Printed Words, Computers, and Democratic...
Feb 13th
“Under a socialist system, government consolidates power unto...”
— David Korten
— David Korten
Feb 13th
“A tremendous surplus was squandered and lost into ever...”
— The Lost Decade
— The Lost Decade
Feb 13th
The H-1B visa has got to go
Feb 13th
“What more, you may ask, do we want? … We do not want merely...”
— C.S. Lewis
— C.S. Lewis
Feb 12th
25 facts you should know about green IT
Feb 12th
“The middle class is anxious, the rich are defensive, the...”
— Richard Sale
— Richard Sale
Feb 12th
Benson
Feb 12th
Why I Can't Afford Cheap
Feb 12th
“Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to...”
— Joseph Addison
— Joseph Addison
Feb 12th
“Another source of conviction in the existence of God,...”
— Charles Darwin
— Charles Darwin
Feb 12th
“Today is the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, whom most...”
— Electoral-vote.com
— Electoral-vote.com
Feb 12th
Iraq's 'female bomber recruiter'
Feb 12th
David Cohen
Feb 12th
“Algorithms in business appear to be magical, because they...”
— Seth Godin
— Seth Godin
Feb 12th
Five Things We Can Learn From Creationists
Feb 12th
“Our nation has been locked for decades in a never-ending...”
— MattMaroon.com
— MattMaroon.com
Feb 12th
Benson
Feb 12th
“All of the high-minded prohibitions against hiring...”
— Susan Jacoby
— Susan Jacoby
Feb 12th
Abortions rights... and wrongs
Feb 12th
Economist James Galbraith: Bailed-Out...
AMY GOODMAN: Professor James Galbraith, something I’ve noticed over these last weeks is this whole debate, sort of re-debating the New Deal and FDR and what it accomplished, and conservatives continually saying that it was not the New Deal that ended the Depression, it was World War II.JAMES GALBRAITH: Well, first of all, there is a grave understatement in those arguments about what the New Deal actually did. And that understatement is typically because the unemployment figures that many people are accustomed to using for the 1930s don’t count people who actually worked for the New Deal. This is Michael Steele’s distinction between jobs and work. But people who were building the Lincoln Tunnel or the Triborough Bridge or the aircraft carrier Yorktown are counted as work relief and not as employed, and there were many millions of those. And when you put them into the figures, you find that the New Deal actually reduced unemployment from 25 percent in 1933 to about—to less than ten percent in 1936. It went up again in ’37 and then came back down again to about ten percent before the war. So, a major, major improvement in unemployment did occur under the New Deal.
It is true that the war made a major transformation in the economy. It drove unemployment to zero. But it also did something else. It gave the American family, the American household, a financial cushion, which was the war bonds that people accumulated during the war that formed the basis for the financial prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s. And that is what made the—made it possible for the private financial system, which collapsed in 1929, to recover in the 1950s and ’60s. And I think that point is very important, because what it shows you is that when the financial system goes down, as it seems to have gone down in the last couple of years, recovery requires a long time. And the precondition for recovery is not fixing the banks; it’s fixing the balance sheets of the households, the creditworthiness of the American family.
And the problem that we have here is the fall in housing prices, people who have mortgages that are worth much more than their houses, which is rendering the entire borrowing base of the American economy basically insolvent. And it will lead to make it extremely difficult for the mechanisms of credit to work again, until you’ve done enough basically to stabilize housing, to stabilize jobs and incomes, and then make it possible for banks—for any reasonable bank, even a solvent bank—to look at its borrowers and say, “Gee, this is a good credit risk,” and for that matter, for the borrowers themselves to feel, “Gee, this is a good time to come in and borrow and get that new car.” That’s the issue that they’re going to face. It’s going to take a long time and major change. And that’s why I say the whole package here is probably not adequate, but it’s a good—that said, what Roosevelt did in ’33 wasn’t adequate either. It was simply a start. And that’s where we are.
Feb 12th
Which is Greener — Online or Print?
Feb 12th
The Trough of No Value
Feb 11th
Caught serving as a propaganda outlet for a...
Feb 11th
Ghastly working conditions in a Chinese...
Feb 11th
“Now, look, this is America. We always had the best...”
— President Obama
— President Obama
Feb 11th
“Rob Bell ended his session by pushing a shopping cart...”
— Paper cuts, forgiveness and...
— Paper cuts, forgiveness and...
Feb 11th
Tom Toles
Feb 11th
How to write a Linux virus in 5 easy steps
Feb 11th
“…when a thing has to be attempted, one must never think...”
— C.S. Lewis
— C.S. Lewis
Feb 11th
Why We're Probably in For a Long Recession
Feb 11th
About Bailout Nation . . .
Feb 11th
Benson
Feb 11th