1837
I've been reading Gotham for something like the last year, dipping in when I'm staying up late or don't have a stack of New Yorker's to get through, and have finally reached the economic crisis of 1837 and the subsequent depression. Speaking of which, the conditions that brought about the the hard times then sound so very much like those prevailing now - with the two notable exceptions of war (none then; lots now) and the "independent" Reserve bank system presently in place (which had been defeated in the marketplace just prior to the crash then) - that I was getting pretty depressed over the economic prospects we face in America and Australia right now.

While the Federal Reserve is a strong and effective institution now, it cannot control every aspect of the economy, and recessions and depressions are nearly inevitable. And while the central cause of America's foreign debt is the war in Iraq, which is ostensibly a temporary situation and one meant to eventually result in better world economic conditions (among other, more immediate and stated goals), the nation's currency is still being substantially propped up by China. If they call in even a portion of that debt. . . .

Meanwhile, in Australia, I can't speak knowledgably about foreign debt, although I understand it's pretty substantial, one of the other key conditions is teh battle against inflation and the relationship of the government to the management of labor vis a vis management, which the present administration seems intent on reverting to conditions more akin to the nineteenth century than the twentieth. In 1837 the government frequently and harshly intervened in labor disputes, prosecuting unions and unionists, supporting strike-breaking, even sending in the troops periodically, to the point that unions were effectively abolished. If anyone looks at the Howard industrial relations laws and says that's not what he's up to in this instance, they're lying or deluded. The argument then, over 150 years ago, was whether the worker had any right to set the worth of his or her labor or if that could only be set by free market forces. Wages went down and prices went up and the depression that resulted was devastating, with little or no assistance provided by the government, which had determined to rely on the same charitable impulses and institutions that the Bush administration has been trying to use as a replacement for welfare. Howard's been pushing for government to get out of the business of providing a social safety net, too, and I fear we're headed for a fall.

If you've got a credit card with any debt on it, pay it off fast, I'd say, and cut the damn thing up. I also had a moment of panic, thinking that selling up our mortgaged-to-the-hilt property might put us in a position to weather the coming storm, but really, our ability to ride out any substantial economic downturn is more reliant on my ability to hold a job than anything else, and the unit is really all we've got. Once the IR laws go into effect, it will be a year at least before the true effect is felt, or more, since I've got a contract for that period. Then we'll see what has to be done or if my utter lack of economics training has just led me into doomsaying.