The GREAT Depression

My parents lived, as adults, through the Crash of 1929 and the :Great Depression".  As an adult college student, after my Navy career, I researched and wrote a paper on the events that lead up to the "Great Depression".   Remember the often quoted phrase;  " Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."   Let's look at what I learned.

Starting in 1926, the economy was going down hill. Employment was on a roller coaster trip, but mostly going down hill, with short spurts of growth.  Those growth spurts could be directly tracked to a few very rich men, buying stocks that were fundamentally worthless, to prop up a failing stock market.  Rockefeller, Crock, and a few other men would buy, when the market was slipping badly.  This worked, or more correctly, delayed the inevitable, until they ran out of money in 1929.  The market then crashed, BIG!

Now, look at today's news.  The Federal Reserve, a group of rich men, who use money they print, without backing of anything of value, poured billions of dollars into the world banks.  The result. today the stock market was up almost 500 points!   The question is, what happens to the value of our dollar when the Fed prints billions of Monopoly money and spreads it around the globe?   I will tell you, you money in your bank account, your 401K, your Roth, your mattress, is worth a lot less.  But the real question is, when will the Fed run out of ink and paper?  And then, when they do, we will see a crash that makes 1929 look like a toy car falling off the coffee table!

My parents?  They are gone now, but in 1929, my Dad had a great job that endured the depression.  He drove street car in Cleveland, Ohio.  On his route was a street corner comedian that was always at the same place on Euclid Avenue everyday.  Who was that?  Bob Hope.  The moral to this story is, you had better learn to tell jokes or drive a bus.  Everythiong else in in danger.