Home » Posts tagged 'depression' (Page 4)
Five years ago, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and it looked for a while like everything was going to collapse. No one knew exactly what was next as the financial system was imploding all around us.
Today, we’re still struggling to regain what we lost in the aftermath of this panic, although there is some reason to hope that we’re beginning to turn the corner. What has happened in the wake of it all? It’s worth taking stock and seeing where we stand.
When the summer livin’ is easy, I enjoy sitting out on the porch with a few tunes. Today’s lazing soundtrack was “Three Views of a Secret” by Jaco Pastorius as I went over some old posts to see if anything needed revisiting. And this piece from July 2011 popped out as a debate that is still raging – but with some resolution. It seemed to fit the tension that always builds in a Jaco piece.
Economists, as noted before, have widely divergent views about the economic situation and what should be done about it. But the experiments that have been running through various economies are teaching us all a little bit along the way as to who may be right. It’s worth revisiting.
Much has been happening lately, but the news is hard to digest. For now, I’d rather stay with the economic news and summarize what I think is going on. This post is largely a repeat from last year, but it makes a jumping-off point. I think that the context of the news is extremely important because without it all we have is a senseless jumble of events and not a coherent understanding.
If we can’t grab what is happening around us and make it our own, how can we call ourselves a free and democratic society? Barataria does what it can to offer a different way of looking at what is happening and relate it in story form, free of unexplained jargon. Hopefully, this will help to make a more real and useful politics.
After a few months of big events and heavy articles, it’s time to summarize the Baratarian view on the big economic picture in one polemic and invite your comments.
It’s halftime! 2013 is half over, and data for another quarter is in. It’s time to check in on Barataria’s predictions for the year and see how things are going.
The mainstream press has already latched onto the story of a recovery that is slow but gaining strength, so this is hardly news anymore. But exactly how and why it is strong remains important in many ways. This is a restructuring more than a traditional recovery after a recession, so it takes a lot of time. The foundation has to be laid before the new economy can be framed on top of it. That foundation came through in 2012, but progress has to continue in key areas to make it possible for the jump to a new boomtime around 2017 or so.
Break out the expensive commercials and grill the burgers, we have a game!
Around the world, two stories have been consistent since 2008 – the developed world is struggling with a depression while the developing world largely charges ahead. The two worlds have never been so far apart as the careen towards similarity. But in this hemisphere, three stories have come to show where it all comes together – how “wealthy” is what a nation feels more than how it is.
Forget how Japan and Europe are wallowing in desperation for a while – on this side of the big ponds things are happening. It may be slower than anyone wants, but change is happening. The reactions to that change show that my favorite saying is still true – that while people are people, cultures are cultures. Wealth, or at least the feeling of wealth, is a state of mind.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 