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12 Responses to “Discussing the Great Depression”

1. Its_Science Says:
   November 15th, 2008 at 3:44 pm

   Still can’t see these embedded videos with Firefox, although the youtube ones work fine.

2. bill750 Says:
   November 15th, 2008 at 4:14 pm

   It doesn’t work with Google Chrome, either…

3. Mike in Nola Says:
   November 15th, 2008 at 4:25 pm

   Same here with Firefox, even with noscript not blocking anything that I can see. Works ok in IE7.

   One solution is a Firefox add on called IE Tab. It allows you to open a new tab in Firefox that uses the IE rendering engine, but you don’t have to leave Firefox to use it. I originally installed it for checking browser compatibility when I design web pages, but have found it handy on some pages like this one where flash or something inexplicably refuses to work.

   https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419

4. Mike in Nola Says:
   November 15th, 2008 at 4:42 pm

   My father was a teen at the time. He was born out in the country, but was sent to live with an aunt in New Orleans after his mother died when he was young. He tells a story about almost strangling trying to swallow a large spoon of peanut butter in one gulp. He had pilfered it from the kitchen because he was so hungry.

   One advantage we will have if it comes to it and the neocons aren’t in charge is that the US has a huge agricultural surplus. At least Americans shouldn’t starve. Although, after seeing the picture of Barry bellyflopping, I think some could do with less

   I remember seeing a talk by Bob Rubin saying that this surplus was one of our greatest assets. People need to eat, even if they can’t afford to buy “stuff.”

5. KJ Foehr Says:
   November 15th, 2008 at 5:45 pm

   My father who was 85 when he died two years ago told me of eating lard sandwiches as a child in the GD, and he said “you could buy a loaf of bread and a half pound of bologna to go with it for a nickel each, but nobody had a dime to buy it with”.

   And I remember him saying in the ’04 – ’05 timeframe that, “there is too much money around; something bad is going to happen.” He couldn’t get his mind around it all, but his common sense forged from such hard times as the GD and WW2 made him realize something was wrong, false, or unbalanced, however you want to characterize it, and that it couldn’t last and would end badly.

   He wouldn’t be surprised at all by the situation now.

   He also used to say, “this country couldn’t stand another depression; young people these days would riot and the country would fall apart.” But I doubt that part will come to pass.

6. samsin Says:
   November 15th, 2008 at 5:57 pm

   Can see this in Safari and IE.

   Also, in no way are we going to revisit the GD. GD2 aint going to happen. Maybe just a “D” though. At best a *big* R ( = 1982 or maybe a little worse.)

7. DP Says:
   November 15th, 2008 at 7:00 pm

   Not sure what the difference is, but I always see the videos in Firefox (3) no problem.

8. vv111y Says:
   November 15th, 2008 at 8:07 pm

   Clip works for me in Chrome — 0.3.155.0 , actually called chromium now.
   You need to separately download this build.
   With this build so far everything works, including windows player.

9. vv111y Says:
   November 15th, 2008 at 8:09 pm

   My take,

   since economies are in a compromised position, it increases the possibility of a depression. It is possible that actions now taken can make things worse.

10. vv111y Says:
    November 15th, 2008 at 9:02 pm

    Foehr,

    I was listening to retellings of the GD (like this clip) on 88.7 out of Buffalo. It was done by Studs Turkel (sic?).
    One of the people recounting said the same thing “people today aren’t the same as people back then…” He said some stuff to the effect that people back then were much more civilized and had more character than today.

11. leftback Says:
    November 15th, 2008 at 10:20 pm

    GD2 is not going to happen, even if they have to destroy the value of the $. The UK went through a debt crisis in the 1970s and bailed out or nationalized all the industries you can imagine, in the process destroying the value of sterling and making George Soros extremely rich.

12. Blackhalo Says:
    November 16th, 2008 at 1:25 pm

    “people back then were much more civilized and had more character than today.”

    I am repeatedly surprised by how shallow Boomers and their kids are. Scoreless soccer says it all. Everyone is is winner!

    Hard times teach hard lessons. I prefer to get mine from my parents and grandparents, but it seems this time we get to experience it first hand.

    “GD2 is not going to happen”

    I have yet to rule it out. It depends heavily on how the new congress and administration handles it. Globalization has implications that I can not predict.