Smooth Pebbles

The joys of writing about (a great) depression

Amid much good reporting on the current economic mess has been some weird vicarious excitement -- the sort of giddy buzz of kids watching a disaster and simultaneously not realizing that it's real and hoping it gets worse. You see this in the many stories about the Great Depression, the implication being that we're facing something similar here. A lot of writers seem almost eager to see what such a thing looks like. Is this a longing to be Part of History? Don't know. But I was glad to see I'm not the only one bothered by this.

From Virginia Postrel:

If anyone should fear a Depression, it should be journalists, who are already the equivalent of 1980s steelworkers. But instead, they seem positively giddy with anticipation at the prospect of a return to '30s-style hardship--without, of course, the real hardship of the 1930s. (We're all yuppies now.) The Boston Globe's Drake Bennett asked a bunch of people, including me, what a 21st-century Depression might look like. The results sounded pretty damned good to some people--a sure sign of an affluent society, or at least affluent commentators.

The prospect of a Depression is already creating jobs for (a few) writers. Hodding Carter IV has gotten a book deal described by Publishers Weekly this way:

After 10 years of profligate spending fueled by real estate flips, refinancing and credit card debt, the author will write about living on what he actually earns. In order to do so, he and his family of six will mine cost-saving techniques from the Great Depression and the first cookbook in America, and stay within their budget, whether that means growing their own food or bartering for things they need. Carter is writing a column based on his experiences for Gourmet.

If that last line doesn't bring a smile to your face, you really are depressed.

As Postrel notes in wrapping up, "It's not a Depression, folks, and it wouldn't be nearly as fun to think about if it were."

Postrel also has a nice column in the Atlantic about a lab study of economic bubbles.

Tom Friedman on (not) bailing out Detroit

I frankly don't know what the right call is on bailing out Detroit. On one hand, smart people are saying that not doing so could dangerously deepen the recession. On the other, if business idiocy had a three-strikes policy, these companies would be doing life. While going to school in Ohio car country in the late 1970s, I got a glimpse of the pain that area felt when the industry collapsed because it failed to adjust to a world that wanted smaller, better cars; tremendous unemployment rates, lots of idle people, most of them decent as hell, wishing they had something constructive to do. It was a monumental failure and a ghastly betrayal.

That the auto industry would repeat the same mistake (again, multiple times) so soon and so spectacularly almost defies belief. Do these people deserve another shot? Should we fool ourselves they can learn enough to turn these companies around? Evidence suggests otherwise. Their failure to learn brings to mind that Simpsons episode in which Bart -- or is it Homer?-- keeps reaching for a treat even though he gets shocked every time. Incapable of even the simplest conditional learning.

Anyway, Friedman, whom I often find a bit hard to take, frankly, articulates nicely here the sense that trying to save these companies would be throwing good money after bad:

Our bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the mail-order-catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into the CD music business on the eve of the birth of the iPod and iTunes. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into a book-store chain on the eve of the birth of Amazon.com and the Kindle. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into improving typewriters on the eve of the birth of the PC and the Internet.

I'll be deeply surprised if he's wrong.