Out of the Past

At the core of the conflict is the reality that redress for the Jewish victims of centuries of European pogroms, which culminated in the Holocaust, made victims out of Palestinians, non-Europeans who had nothing to do with the repression of Jews on the Continent….

…the majority of Gaza’s inhabitants are refugees (or their descendants) who were displaced from their homes in 1947-1948 in what was then Palestine and is now Israel…

History teaches that justice is a prerequisite for peace, and that truth is a prerequisite for justice. Understanding what is happening today in Gaza — another chapter in a seemingly endless cycle of vengeance — requires an understanding of what happened in 1947-1948. Absent an acknowledgment of the truths of the past, there can be no agreement on the future.

by Tarif Abboushi
commentary in the Houston Chronicle

Historically, bear markets are followed with powerful rallies. According to Prudential Investment Management, in the past nine bear markets (going back to the 1950’s), when the market declined substantially as the economy contracted, the average first year recovery saw a 36% return. The following year showed a 12% average return.

For example, the recession of 1973-1974, triggered by the oil embargo and quadrupling oil prices, and coupled with the Watergate scandal, the Nixon resignation and Vietnam War spending, had the country in a very gloomy mood. People anticipated the worst and spoke of the end of the American era. The following year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 38%, and the year after that an additional 21%. The steep ‘81-’82 declines brought about by the massive failure of the savings and loans industry and high interest rates aimed at choking inflation, was followed by a 58% first year recovery. In October 2002, the market indices bottomed after the collapse of the great tech bubble, and in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, concurrent with corporate scandals such as the bankruptcy of Enron. The following year saw a 34% rise in the S&P 500.

by Alan Schram
Posted on The Huffington Post December 16, 2008 | 09:28 PM (EST)

The Day of the Cattleman
by Ernest Staples Osgood,
University of Chicago Press, 1957

In the year 1874, patents for barbed wire and for a machine for making it were taken out by J.F. Glidden of De Kalb, Illinois. By 1880 barbed-wire factories in the United States were turning out forty thousand tons of the cheap fencing; by 1890 this output had tripled.

In the early eighties the practice of enclosing portions of the public domain with this cheap and easy fencing spread so rapidly that the whole range industry was in danger of being strangled to death in a web of its own making. Trail herds on their way to the railroads or to distant ranges, found long drift fences barring their path. Long-established routes of travel were blocked and mail carriers complained that they were forced to detour around some cattleman’s enclosure. A Texas governor was forced to ask the state legislature to free the county seat of Jones County, which was completely circumscribed by a fence, fifteen miles distant, having but two gates…

The din raised over this evidence of the cattleman’s greed finally moved Congress. In 1885 a law was passed designed to expedite prosecution of those who stretched fences out upon the public domain. Under the law, suits were instituted in the range country, and the illegal fences began to come down. But they never entirely disappeared.

• The Day of the Cattleman
• Between Fences: Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition

Commerce of the Prairies
The 1844 edition unabridged in two volumes and with an introduction by Archibald Hanna
Volume 2

Strange as the fact may appear, one may travel fifteen hundred miles, and perhaps more, on the main public highway through Northern Mexico, without finding a single tavern with general accommodations. This, however, may be accounted for, by taking into consideration the peculiar mode of travelling of the country, which renders resorts of this kind almost unnecessary.
Arrieros with their atajos of pack mules always camp out, being provided with their cooks and stock of provisions, which they carry with them. Ordinary travellers generally unite in little caravans, for security against robbers and marauders; and no caballero ever stirs abroad without a train of servants, and a pack-mule to carry his cantinas (a pair of large wallets or leathern boxes), filled with provisions, on the top of which is lashed a huge machine containing a mattrass and all the other ‘fixings’ for bed furniture. Thus equipped, the caballero snaps his fingers at all the hotels garnis of the universe, and is perfectly independent in every movement.

The Southwest in American Literature and Art: The Rise of a Desert Aesthetic by David W Teague

John C. Fremont, exploring the region in 1843-44, found the Great Basin Desert to be of “dreary and savage character” and, in reporting its inward-draining rivers, expressed doubt about its future productivity. The idea of the desert as irrigated breadbasket, the artificially watered counterpart of the natural garden of the East, would not arise for two generations, for as Henry Nash Smith has shown, “in order to establish itself in the vast new area of the plains . . . the myth of the garden had to confront and overcome another myth of exactly opposed meaning, al­though of inferior strength - the myth of the Great American Desert.

… many early explorers and travelers exhibited signs of distress, sometimes at deep levels, brought on by their exposure to the desert, so they seldom saw anything practically or aesthetically redeeming in it. Zebulon Pike, one of the first white Americans to write about the Southwest, saw no future there for civilized people. He could not imagine human life as he understood it existing in the desert. Pike responded positively to the mountainsides and river bottoms of New Mexico, but he reported in his Exploratory Travels through the Westem Territories of North America (1811) that “all the rest of the country presents to the eye a barren wild of poor scarcely to be improved by culture.” In his eyes, as E. N. Feltskogland suggested, “the wilderness of desert and mountain seemed to bar his triumphant expansion of American history and progress.

I used to carry a small canvas bag with me everywhere I went. Inside that bag was my prized shooter, an oversized aggie with distinctive caramel-colored swirls, and an assortment of smaller clearies, puries, clays and jaspers.
We played for keeps on the playground of my youth, circles scratched in the dirt, knuckles drawn, shooters poised. I can still hear the loud CRACK! of a successful shot and remember the agony of watching helplessly as some 10-year-old sharpshooter cleared the ring of my last target marble.

The size of my marble bag reflected my fortunes. Some days it bulged with booty; other times I had only my shooter.

I no longer measure my worth in rounded bits of glass. It’s been a long time since I was on my knees in the dirt taking aim at a purple-tinted brandie. But it saddens me that no one has taken my place at the ring and that few schoolchildren these days have any interest in the game.

America has nearly lost its marbles. The last I played was in the 1960s, but interest was flagging even then. The game’s golden age was during the Depression years before television, arcades and Nintendo.
Actually, gaming with marbles dates back to the Middle Ages, or even earlier. Little orbs of stone and clay have been found in the ruins of many ancient civilizations.

German glassmakers introduced glass marbles in the 1840s and dominated the market until 1915 when World War I interrupted exports and American marble makers started mechanizing. By the end of the war, the U.S. dominated the production of milkies, moonies, clearies and puries. Companies like Akro Agate, Master Marble and Marble King were as familiar to schoolkids as Disney, Sony and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
But after nearly forty years of market dominance, America’s marble companies let a newcomer take aim and clear the ring. From post-War Japan came a sensuously beautiful clear glass marble split by intersecting veins of brilliant color. The “cat’s eye,” as we called it, quickly consumed the marble business.

It took American marble companies nearly five years to introduce their own cat’s eye. By then, most were out of business.

Imports like the cat’s eye marble will exploit an unfulfilled demand, whether it’s a cool-looking piece of glass or a well-built small car. But the foreign producer rarely spends much time at product promotion or development in the countries buying its import. The decline of American marble making was matched by a decline in advertising, tournaments and schoolyard games.

In their complacency the local producers let an out-of-town player shoot first. The new kid cleared the ring and went home, leaving the rest of us less interested in the game.

That’s how America lost its marbles.

Today’s financial crisis echoes a similar scandal in the 1980s - the Savings and Loan Crisis — which resulted in the failure of 747 savings and loan associations in the U.S. and ultimately cost taxpayers some $160 billion in taxes or charges on their accounts. The crisis contributed to substantial budget deficits in the early 1990s and the 1990-1991 economic recession which helped end the presidency of George Bush.

Laissez-faire attitudes about economic oversight and corporate power fueled the deregulation of the savings and loan industry in the 1980s that allowed the crisis to develop, a history lesson that closely parallels the broader catastrophe of 2008.

In his new history of the major social, political, and economic events of the 20th century in the Rocky Mountain West — Rocky Mountain Heartland — Duane A. Smith recounts the affects of the Savings and Loan Crisis on Colorado:

Then came the mid-1980s. The nation hit an economic wall with a scandal involving savings and loan banks. Deregulated by the federal government, they had expanded vigorously - some with too little thought or direction. Inadvisable loans, poor or corrupt management, shady or at best shoddy practices, “creative accounting,” and staggering debt loads brought some down, and the ripples affected the entireindustry.

Colorado became a symbol of everything that happened when Denver’s Silverado Banking, Savings & Loan went down. This high-flying institution had become an icon of Colorado and Denver’s good times. During its decade-long meteoric rise, Silverado’s leaders had emerged as movers and shakers, and the institution as a pacesetter in helping build Denver up during the energy crisis. Oil and mineral companies arrived to make the town their headquarters; high-rise buildings were interjected mto the skyline, and fancy homes dotted plush suburbs. But everything started to unravel in 1986, and late in 1988 the federal government took over Silverado after a revealing investigation. Its “creative bookkeeping,” shady practices, and overly ambitious adventures became the talk of the town.

Like its guilty counterparts elsewhere, Silverado collapsed, leavmg taxpayers holding nearly $300 million in bad debts. It created a a national stir in part because Vice President George Bush’s son Neil served on Silverado’s board. Not until after the century’s turn was the mess cleaned up.

That marked the end of Denver and the state’s good times, and the slide of the postwar boom-Colorado’s longest-into history. Not until the early 1990S would the good times return. The crash proved devastating to a generation that hardly remembered the 1930S depression. Bankruptcy petitions peaked in 1989, and even a year later, 2,077 businesses failed. The construction business, a former state pillar, crumbled, with employment dropping by nearly a third to 61,000 workers in three years. The situation did not immediately improve despite hopes.

Many Coloradans who had arrived since 1945 wondered where the good times had gone and if they would return. Experienced old-timers knew they would return and questioned the crybaby attitude of those who had been attracted by the times and “land of milk and honey” anticipations that came with it and thought they would never end.

Beyond Denver, few folk had heard of Silverado until it failed and affected their lives and gave the state a bad image. The economic slump that had hit the energy business, the savings and loan failures, and the collapse of regional railroads and airlines all had their roots in outside influences and actions. Clearly and dramatically, westerners, as in earlier times, did not control their fate to a large degree. Their Populist and Progressive ancestors had known that, and now a new generation learned it. Such events were further examples of what Governor Lamm and others had long warned: the Rockies were becoming “a colony of the East.”

• Keating Economics