Sunday, March 15, 2009

The Great Duplication

Our present economic bust was predicted by some, had clear indicators to anyone willing to rationally assess them, and was an all too familiar scenario to students of our economic history.

These are some quotes I’ve come across which seem quite applicable:

“A country without a memory is a country of madmen.” ~ George Santayana

“Those who don’t learn history are destined to repeat it.” ~ Edmund Burke

“We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.” George Bernard Shaw

“History is a race between education and catastrophe.” ~ H.G. Wells

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” ~ Karl Marx

“One faces the future with one’s past.” ~ Pearl S. Buck

Robert Kuttner’s The Alarming Parallels between 1929 and 2007 is a must-read synopsis of our Pollyanna-ish disregard for historical lessons, how we dropped (knowingly and unknowingly) the ball, and how we can fix things.

Although this is definitely a gruelingly torturous recession…The Great Recession, as some have coined, just won't do. I find it more fitting to call this period in American history, shamefully, The Great Duplication. The only thing that prevented us from catching/correcting it was our hubris and greed.

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