Roundup: Media's Take

Stephen Foley: History lessons ... Galbraith's 'The Great Crash 1929' is still essential reading today

[Stephen Foley writes for the Independent.] The late John Kenneth Galbraith attributed the longevity of his book The Great Crash 1929 – published in 1955 and never since out of print – to the tendency of history to threaten a repeat. "Each time it has been about to pass from bookstores," he wrote in a later foreword, "another speculative episode – another bubble or the ensuing misfortune – has stirred interest in the history of this, the great modern case of boom and

Martin Kettle: History can guide, yet there are new limits of the possible

[Martin Kettle writes for the Guardian on British, European and American politics, as well as the media, law and music.] This is no time for outdated thinking and conventional dogma, Gordon Brown announced as he unveiled Labour's bank rescue package this week. Who could disagree? Yet since David Cameron was not about to insist that outdated thinking and conventional dogma were exactly what we need more of at such a time, Brown's words recalled a Roy Jenkins axiom - that a politician

Noam Scheiber: The resentments of Sarah Palin

It's unlikely the name Sarah Palin would mean much to anyone if not for a man named Nick Carney. Long before she stood up to Republican cronies and "the good old boys" of Alaska, Palin stood up to Carney, a colleague on Wasilla's city council. As Kaylene Johnson explains in her sympathetic biography, Sarah, Carney had the gall to propose an ordinance giving his own company the city contract for garbage removal. In Johnson's telling, it was the first time Palin bravely spoke truth to po

Karen Blumenthal: As Dire as the Times May Seem, History Isn't About to Repeat Itself

A long streak of speculative lending got out of hand as banks and even staid industrial companies made a stream of risky loans. Consumer spending on cars and clothes was slipping, but no one was paying attention. The stock market grew shaky in September, and then in October, the bottom fell out. Suddenly, everyone seemed to want to sell. But there were few buyers, and over six bleak trading days, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost a third of its value. It was a panic, said a seni

James Taranto: The 'Fact Checking' Fad

In a September 1984 campaign speech, Walter Mondale, the Democratic presidential nominee and former vice president, asked,"Do you really want Jerry Falwell to pick the next two judges to the Supreme Court?" What reminded us of this was a story from yesterday's New York Times, written by Patrick Healy, which begins as follows: There is no way, of course, that Senator Barack Obama would ever nominate three controversial figures from his past to serve on the United States Supreme C

John Tierney: A Gift From the ’70s ... Energy Lessons

The presidential candidates claim to see America’s energy future, but their competing visions have a certain vintage quality. They’ve revived that classic debate: the hard path versus the soft path. The soft path, as Amory Lovins defined it in the 1970s, is energy conservation and power from the sun, wind and plants — the technologies that Senator Barack Obamaemphasizes in his plan to reduce greenhouse emissions. Senator John McCain is more enthusiastic about building nuclear power

David Martin: Swiftboating George Washington

Back page of the January 3, 1789, edition of the Philadelphia Weekly Gazette: We, the delaware boat veterans, take as our solemn duty before our Creator to make known the truth concerning the Presidential candidate who calls himself George Washington. We beseech the public to read our account. General Washington hath permitted certain myths and misconceptions to arise surrounding his alleged role in the crossing of the Delaware River on December 25, 1776. As pious and p

Christopher Clausen: This is the most important election in American history. They always say that.

[Christopher Clausen is the author of Faded Mosaic: The Emergence of Post-Cultural America.] In July 1864, as President Abraham Lincoln prepared to run for a second term against General George B. McClellan, The New York Times editorialized: “We have had many important elections, but never one so important as that now approaching....The republic is approaching what is to be one of the most important elections in its history.” The Civil War had been raging for three years and seemed t

Marc Ginsberg: Obama's New Deal for America

[Ambassador Ginsberg spent his formative years in the Middle East, particularly in Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon from 1960-1968. He began his foreign policy career as a foreign affairs advisor during his freshman year in college to Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1971-1977). He was appointed by Secretary of State Vance as his White House Liaison in 1977, and then served as Deputy Senior Advisor to President Carter for Middle East Policy on his White House staff from 1979-1981.] Kudos

Editorial in the Newstatesman: We have no imperial right to remake nations

Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith and Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles sound like the kind of chaps who might have led skirmishes along the North-West Frontier in the days of the Great Game. Their names may be redolent of the era when an officer bound for the east set off from his St James's club with a volume or two of Kipling in his trunk; but this should not make us overlook the wisdom of their judgement about the resilience of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The brigadier, Britain's most senior

Editorial in the Guardian: In praise of ... John Maynard Keynes

He was about the last person you would expect to devise an economy theory for state intervention. Educated at Eton and Cambridge, a don with a flair for making money, and a Bloomsbury group aesthete, John Maynard Keynes enjoyed nothing more than proving Victorian morality wrong. So he relished the paradox of thrift: the idea that if everyone saves at the same time, the collapse in demand drags down national income to the point where the value of what is being saved is reduced. Keynes's greatest

Richard Bernstein: Past holds lessons for future of presidential debates

[Richard Bernstein writes for the International Herald Tribune.] How's this for an idea? Rather than continuing to have presidential-election debates in the current quick-and-shallow one-upmanship format currently being used, let's revert to the mother of all great political debates in America, those between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, which took place during the race for the U.S. Senate in Illinois 150 years ago. As in the Lincoln-Douglas affair, the first spe

Jeff Randall: Remember 1929 – what seemed to be the end was only the beginning

[Jeff Randall is a business journalist.] His televised humiliation was orchestrated by a veteran Democrat, Henry Waxman, whose simple question about Fuld’s alleged $480m of earnings – Is that fair? – hit the banker like a haymaker, rendering him speechless. As the cameras focused on Fuld’s haunted stare, there was a sense of action replay. Hadn’t we seen this freak show, or at least something remarkably like it, long before Lehman went under – a display of furious inqu

Gordon Rayner: Does the world need a new banking 'policeman'?

[Gordon Rayner is chief reporter at the Telegraph.] With war raging across the globe in July 1944, ministers from all 44 Allied nations met at the imposing Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to thrash out a set of rules that would govern world finance once Hitler was defeated. Knowing that greater international trade would help to prevent future wars, and determined to avoid another Great Depression, the delegates signed the Bretton Woods Agreements, creating th

Norman Solomon: Projecting an Obama Victory?

Projection is a psychological hazard of politics. What’s “obvious” to some doesn’t occur to others. So, these days, it’s hardly reassuring when some progressives roll their eyes at the latest McCain-Palin maneuver and express confidence that few voters will be swayed by the latest slimy attacks on Barack Obama. The poll numbers so far in October, combined with ample media hype, have fostered the belief that the economic crisis is close to dooming the McCain campaign. But any c

Stephen King: Roosevelt's lesson... a decisive act to break the psychology of depression

[Stephen King is managing director of economics at HSBC.] ...The nuclear option is to bypass the banking system altogether. In effect, this is what President Roosevelt did in 1933 and 1934. If banks are unwilling to lend to each other and, thus, unable to lend to non-banks, governments can elect to turn themselves into banks. After all, during a banking crisis, people are typically happier to hold cash and government bonds than anything else. The desire to avoid financial losses abs

Howard Fineman: Obama and the Echoes of Lincoln

[Howard Fineman is Newsweek's senior Washington Correspondent and columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington Bureau Chief.] ... As Obama has said repeatedly, he is, by virtue of his own DNA, “the change we have been waiting for.” He is, by that standard, the rightful heir to Lincoln’s vision and hope. Obama is a brilliant and welcoming fellow with an eye for the main chance, a knack for offering himself as a vehicle for consensus. But in what other way does Obama deserve to b

Justin Raimondo: Gang of Democracies ... Woodrow Wilson's dream may yet become our nightmare

[Justin Raimondo is editorial director of Antiwar.com. ] When I hear the word "democracy," I reach not for my revolver, but for my wallet. I freeze and wait for the next blow to fall: a tax hike, another war, a new form of knavery masquerading as well-intentioned ignorance. Imagining a "League of Democracies," as a number of foreign-policy mavens have, I reach instead for the history books and recall the many incarnations—and failures, most of them

Tom Streithorst: Would Iraqis greet us with flowers? I made sure of it.

[Tom Steithorst has worked as a cameraman for 20 years. He is currently back in Iraq.] Five years into the war, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and over 4,000 Americans have died. The proud and educated Iraqi middle class has been eviscerated. And America, the birthplace of rock and roll and Marilyn Monroe, the conqueror of the Nazis and the Soviets, for generations a benevolent and powerful force in the world, has been revealed as impotent and petty. The goals of transforming the M

Nicholas von Hoffman: Crash Test

As American finance is being twisted and reshaped almost hourly, many worry that we're in for an encore of the galvanic upheavals of 80 years ago. Is this a gruesome economic Groundhog Day? There are important parallels but also major differences. The America of 1929 was energy self-sufficient. It was a muscular industrial society that imported few necessities. A businessman would have been hard pressed to get a foreign-manufactured safety pin into the country. We owed no foreign n