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The spectre of 1932: [2012 the most frightening year in living memory?]
UK Daily Mail ^ | Dec 31, 2011 | Dominic Sandbrook

Posted on 01/01/2012 12:27:30 PM PST by thouworm

Meanwhile, as the eurozone slides towards disaster, the prospects for Europe have rarely been bleaker. Already the European elite have installed compliant technocratic governments in Greece and Italy, and with the markets now putting pressure on France, few observers can be optimistic that the Continent can avoid a total meltdown....

For the most chilling parallel, though, we should look back exactly 80 years, to the cold wintry days when 1931 gave way to 1932.

Then as now, few people saw much to mourn in the passing of the old year. It was in 1931 that the Great Depression really took hold in Europe, bringing governments to their knees and plunging tens of millions of people out of work.

Then as now, the crisis had taken years to gather momentum. After the Wall Street Crash in 1929 — just as after the banking crisis of 2008 — some observers even thought that the worst was over.

But in the summer of 1931, a wave of banking panics swept across central Europe. As the German and Austrian financial houses tottered, Britain’s Labour government came under fierce market pressure to slash spending and cut benefits.

(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 1932; 2012; depression; dominicsandbrook; eucrisis
Full Title:

The spectre of 1932: How a loss of faith in politicians and democracy could make 2012 the most frightening year in living memory

1 posted on 01/01/2012 12:27:33 PM PST by thouworm
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To: thouworm

Our debt and entitlements are choking us. Look at the charts from Zero Hedge!!!!!!

The Federal (Un)Balance Sheet – $65 Trillion Financial Hole = $550k Per Household (Or $2.2 Million Per De-Facto Taxpayer, Take Your Pick!

http://confoundedinterest.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/the-federal-unbalance...

The 50% Keynesians And The Numbness To Government Stimulus

http://confoundedinterest.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/ring-in-the-new-year-with-taxpayers-liable-for-2-3-million-each-for-debt-social-security-medicare-and-other-entitlements/


2 posted on 01/01/2012 12:36:00 PM PST by whitedog57
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To: whitedog57
Already the European elite have installed compliant technocratic governments in Greece and Italy...

There's an interesting assertion. How exactly does that work, again?

3 posted on 01/01/2012 12:46:21 PM PST by Noumenon ("I tell you, gentlemen, we have a problem on our hands." Col. Nicholson-The Bridge on the River Qwai)
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To: Noumenon

The technocrats, the ones who have all kinds of theories on how to “fix” things, and can even get up with their PowerPoint presentations and laser pointers to bolster their arguments, have no clue as to how the almost universal laws of supply and demand work. They keep wanting to tinker with the system at the margins, and inevitably, they cause an overcorrection that is much more damaging than the original problem ever would have been.

Property has a mortgage against it greater than the market value, and the owner is unable to make timely payments on the mortgage, the bank forecloses, resells the property to an investor, and the toxic mortgage is eliminated from the mix. But now, there are all sorts of imposed rules that are supposed to make it possible for the original defaulting property holder to retain a tenuous hold on title, all the while STILL unable to meet the new terms that were reduced for his benefit, and the mortgage loan NEVER gets out of default, adding years until the problem is resolved, if ever.

Finally the lender writes the loan off as a uncollectable debt, and whatever wealth had been invested in that property, simply disappears. Do this enough times, and the whole economic structure gets sucked down a black hole.

And that, dear readers, is what happened to your portfolio invested in REITs. The toxic non-performing mortgages were NOT eliminated, but are still there, festering.

Hint: Remove the regulations that demand the toxic mortgages be “fixed” by the lender, by ofering ever more generous terms, while in no way enforcing compliance by the borrower.


4 posted on 01/01/2012 1:05:07 PM PST by alloysteel (Are Democrats truly "better angels"? They are lousy stewards for America.)
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To: thouworm; SunkenCiv; Cacique; Clemenza; Paleo Conservative; dennisw

I’m not sure I can put to words how much I disagree with this article. It is not the people of European nations who have walked away from democracy, but the trans-national elite, and the ersatz democratic parties they control. The people of the subjects of the EU have not been allowed to vote on EU membership. When allowed by their elites to vote on expansion, the votes against expansion have been ignored. They are not allowed to vote on economic policy, social policy, or immigration. And any offending law that somehow passes is subject to the whims of their master in Brussels.
As for unfree Britannia, we see the farce. Cameron rightly opposed Euro strengthening measures, but only to save corrupt EU. He will not allow the hoi polloi to vote on EU membership. There are no right-wing parties rising in the UK. The left-wing nationalist fascist of the BNP are collapsing in internal struggle. The UK Independence Party is essentially a collection of Euroskeptic Tories, forced out by the unDemocratic elite. And the British Freedom party are democratic civic nationalists. The only unDemocratic thugs with any power are people like Mr. Sandbrook, the elite he protects, and their brownshirts in Antifa.


5 posted on 01/01/2012 1:09:58 PM PST by rmlew ("Mosques are our barracks, minarets our bayonets, domes our helmets, the believers our soldiers.")
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To: thouworm

6 posted on 01/01/2012 1:10:57 PM PST by garjog
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To: alloysteel

Hint: For America there is 999. Anyone can see now how Cain represented a threat to the inertia of the fat cat system, hence he was drummed out of the race


7 posted on 01/01/2012 1:33:16 PM PST by Rooivalk
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To: thouworm

1932, how my grandparents would have remembered it well were they still alive; sadly they aren’t. Grandma passed in 1963, Granddad had an early demise from a stroke in 1940.
They were Scotish immigrants from Aberdeen via Trail, Bristish Columbia who would-up in the California Delta town of Pittsburg in 1928. They were naturalized citizens of the US circa 1938.

I am a natural born grandson. My grandmother’s most frightful year was 1941; a short time after grandpa’s demise. She went to work at Camp Stoneman as a cook and raised a single daughter. She had to be be ‘afeared’ as she might say in her Scottish brogue but she and my mother made it thanks to extended family who also emigrated from Aberdeen in the 1920s.

For those of us who have and are preparing, there is no fear. We shall overcome and we shall prosper. Those that will not hear are doomed to troublesome outcomes in the months ahead.


8 posted on 01/01/2012 1:37:50 PM PST by CARTOUCHE (Mayan Angelou's calendar. The end is near in 2012. So is she.)
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To: thouworm

I thought the Great Depression was an American and German thing. Evidently, the Brits had it tough too.


9 posted on 01/01/2012 1:43:54 PM PST by AceMineral (Some people are too stupid for their own good.)
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To: CARTOUCHE
For those of us who have and are preparing, there is no fear. We shall overcome and we shall prosper. Those that will not hear are doomed to troublesome outcomes in the months ahead.

Are you referring to preparing finacially and/or spiritually?

10 posted on 01/01/2012 2:39:15 PM PST by tflabo (Restore the Republic)
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To: tflabo

Of course I am. And the wisest of us will prepare by laying-in a supply of ammo that we might share with those that feel it their right to unrighteously take from those that have prepared. :=)


11 posted on 01/01/2012 3:06:53 PM PST by CARTOUCHE (Mayan Angelou's calendar. The end is near in 2012. So is she.)
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To: thouworm; AceMineral; CARTOUCHE
The spectre of 1932:How a loss of faith in politicians and democracy could make 2012 the most frightening year in living memory

Rather late unfortunately with my input into the wonderful world of used books. Worn the covers of this one, in paperback.

1932:Encylopedia of the World's Great Events.
D.S.Halacy Jr
Monarch Books 1964.

The cover shows among other things, a family lining up for relief. The little girl with the cart to get free supplies. Within, we learn of suicides a plenty, one being the Swedish Match King. etc. Also the tragic Lindberg baby case.

The great hunger marches in my own native country. The 1932 march ending at Hyde Park, London. Broken up by police, 75 people hurt. Later the marches from Jarrow in the North, to London. Wanted the government to commission ship yard building. Gaunt flat capped men using the army ground sheet, to protect from the rain. Nothing doing from the government. Given their rail fare back though.

Prime Minister Baldwin did not care. Prime Minister Chamberlain did not care. Ironically it was the war that ended unemployment and sundered the system of the dole.

As for 2012, I am ready. I have seen the 1930's. Our society of the English speaking peoples must stick together. Yes, the whole bloomin' lot of us.

Excuse the ramble. as the Great Lakes area gets it's first real shot of winter. Late in coming as it has ever been.

12 posted on 01/01/2012 9:05:04 PM PST by Peter Libra
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To: Peter Libra

Michigander here, yes, finally got a little ole snow storm...but think we can handle it:)


13 posted on 01/02/2012 10:19:37 AM PST by Engedi (Hec)
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To: Engedi

people back then worked together, helped their neighbors, their country. Remember the pictures of people turning in their aluminum, metal, rubber, to make bullets, jeeps, etc.?

People got by with a hand shake that they would pay for items they didn’t have money for; and they made it right.

There were no CC...you got credit by your word, your honor, your promise to pay.

Today, we have young kids who want it now; don’t want to work, incurr 6 figure college debt, forever students, live with their parents, etc. They are taught to hate America...

Yes, I would say we are in scary times....


14 posted on 01/02/2012 10:23:57 AM PST by Engedi (Hec)
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To: Engedi
Nice to get your heads up on the weather. Also I figured some out there read my very last thread and it was a bit of a ramble. Know Petoskey and much of the Yooper country.
15 posted on 01/02/2012 1:54:18 PM PST by Peter Libra
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