Free Republic

I’ve been drawing comparison to the 1930’s for the last year or so. Over the last week, the comparisons are becoming clearer. So, I think it’s time to put it all down, and let the readers tell me if I’m barking up the wrong tree. Factor One: Anti-Semitism Of course, the early 20th century, and especially after WWI and during the Great Depression, Jews were the popular scapegoats for all of the ills suffered in Germany. While Anti-Semitism wasn’t limited to Germany, it was in Germany where it reached it’s demonic end. I don’t think I need to recap Nazi...

I spoke with Robert Barro of Harvard yesterday about the stimulus bill, fiscal policy, and related issues in macroeconomics. I wanted to speak with Professor Barro after reading his piece in the Wall Street Journal about the multiplier on government spending. The piece, which argued that the multiplier has historically been much lower than the Obama administration hopes, produced a tremendous amount of response -- from Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, Greg Mankiw, Matt Yglesias, and Tyler Cowen (some of them several times). And that response was notable, in part, because it turned into a reflection on the "standards" of the...

KRISTALLNACHT SEVENTY YEARS LATER"Was There No Space in the World for Us?"by Rabbi Marvin Hier, Simon Wiesenthal Center Founder and DeanSeventy years ago, while Jews in America gathered at the Algonquin Hotel and Waldorf Astoria at banquets in support of Jewish causes or in personal celebration of a Simcha, the most notorious pogrom was unleashed by Hitler’s Germany. On this day was born the Night of Broken Glass, Kristallnacht.The Nazis said it was in reaction to the killing of a German official in Paris, but as documents showed, it was a state organized pogrom involving the highest officials of Nazi...

Tuesday, December 26, 2006 Everybody knows that the loss of huge portions of their home U.S. market to imports has decimated U.S.-owned automakers Ford and GM (as well as Chrysler, which is no longer U.S.-owned, but shares many of Detroit’s biggest problems). What everybody doesn’t know is that literally dozens of U.S.-based manufacturing industries have suffered the same kinds of losses since the late 1990s. The clear bottom line, as revealed by the U.S. Business & Industry Council’s latest annual survey of domestic manufacturing’s competitiveness: The United States is a military superpower, but is steadily becoming an industrial also-ran. The...

Juan Peron was an Argentinian president who was a dictator who Fascist tendencies from 1946-1955 and 1972-1974, when he died. He was a soldier originally who in a coup became Secretary of Labor in 1943, then he went to prison, because some military personals feared he was getting powerful in 1945, which he goes to jail. Then in October 17th, a large rally occurs calling for the release of Juan Peron, which he is released. He marries Maria Eva Duarte, who becomes Evita Peron. This was Juan Peron's second marriage. His first wife died of cancer. He is elected in...

Wednesday Canada's National Post published an error correction. Last Friday, the newspaper's lead story reported that the Iranian parliament had approved legislation that would compel Jews to wear a yellow strip, Christians to wear a red strip and Zoroastrians to wear a blue strip on their clothes. The story fomented an international storm. Yet it turned out that the story was untrue - or jumped the gun. The Iranian parliament did pass legislation expressing its intention to install a compulsory Islamic dress code for the country's subjects, but it did not characterize the required attire. On its Web site last...

Many people often speak of the "dangers" of capitalism - unsafe working conditions, little kids working, too many hours in a week, low wages, monotonous work, no health care. This is really the big argument against laissez-faire. They may not say it, but frankly, its what it is. Even George Orwell was big into this. Now, I know that government intereference and poverty truly caused all of this, not businesses. I would like some more specific information, and wondering if you guys could help me out - specifically, historical information (1920s and 1930s). Now, it is obvious why such conditions...

"An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense - perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire - that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other. In order to understand the source of their antagonism, it is necessary first to understand the specific role of gold in a free society. Money is the common denominator of all economic transactions. It is that commodity which serves as a medium...

"An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense - perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire - that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other. In order to understand the source of their antagonism, it is necessary first to understand the specific role of gold in a free society. Money is the common denominator of all economic transactions. It is that commodity which serves as a medium...

Washington Times - Letter to the Editor 6/7/95 - Arlington Thomas Colton Ruthford During the past several months in the American press, the Democrats have frequently denounced the Republicans as Nazis due to their attempts to control runaway federal spending. How very ironic. I remember the Nazis. Let me share a little about them and recall some of their exploits. First of all, "Nazi" was gutter slang for the verb "to nationalize". The Bieder-Mienhoff gang gave themselves this moniker during their early struggles. The official title of the Nazi Party was "The National Socialist Workers Party of Germany". Hitler and...

Europe is in big trouble. It’s economies are stagnant – jobs aren’t being created, and today the unemployment rate in Germany is higher than it was on the day Adolf Hitler took power. The continent’s demographics are catastrophic. The birth rates are so far below replacement that in 30 years there will be more than 70 million fewer Europeans alive than are alive today. And with the exception of Great Britain, Europe no longer has the military power to defend itself. And when Europe is in trouble, it gets very, very nasty. Anti-Semitism is always the canary in the mine,...

Anti-Semitism may seem to be a static, unchanging phenomenon but in fact the obsessive hatred of Jews has a history that goes back millennia and continues to evolve.Developments since World War II and the Holocaust have been especially fast-paced and portentous. Here are four of the most significant shifts: From right to left: For centuries, anti-Semitism was the hallmark of the right and merely episodic on the left. To take the ultimate examples of these trends, Stalin's Judeophobia was peripheral to his monstrous project, but Hitler's was central to his. Even a decade ago, this pattern still basically held true....

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Wachovia Corp., the new owner of SouthTrust Corp., plans to cut 829 jobs in Birmingham between January 2005 and March 2006. More layoffs are expected to follow. The job losses represent about 20 percent of the 4,000 people SouthTrust employs in Birmingham. Charlotte-based Wachovia, which bought SouthTrust last month, told state officials about the job cuts Wednesday, as required by laws that demand disclosure of mass employment cuts. Wachovia, the country's fourth-largest bank, has said it can eliminate $255 million in annual expenses by combining its operations with those of SouthTrust, once Alabama's biggest financial institution. The...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.We couldn't help but be struck by the real message conveyed by a recent brief in the Washington Post Sunday business section on job gains and losses near the nation's capitol. The item juxtaposed the shuttering of General Motors' van assembly plant in Baltimore with the announcement that new high tech jobs were being created in Northern Virginia. At first glance, these developments seemed like an unalloyed triumph of the New Economy and a clear sign that traditional manufacturing is fading into irrelevance. After all, the Post writer emphasized that the GM...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. WASHINGTON - A nearly 13 million-year-old ape discovered in Spain is the last probable common ancestor to all living humans and great apes, a research team says in Friday's issue of Science magazine. A husband-and-wife team of fossil sleuths unearthed an animal with a body like an ape, fingers like a chimp and the upright posture of humans. The ancient ape bridges the gap between earlier, primitive animals and later, modern creatures. This newest ape species, Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, is so significant that it adds a new page to ancient human history....

Low wages lure Mr. Coffee to Mexico, far East Lillie Scott said goodbye to more than just workplace friends and her job of 26 years when Mr. Coffee shut the doors of its cavernous gray factory in a tidy Glenwillow industrial park. When Scott's $9-an-hour job making coffee makers four years ago was transferred to Mexico and Mississippi with 338 others, she and many workmates also bid farewell to financial security. Her sporadic jobs as a home health aide never last long enough to get benefits, and the $800 she gets in monthly unemployment between jobs doesn't cover her rent...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. MOUNTAINTOP, Pa. - A Luzerne County perfume factory is closing at the end of the year, leaving 200 people out of work. New Dana Perfumes Inc., the maker of fragrances including Tabu, English Leather and Love's Baby Soft, will close its plant in Wright Township, said Peter Schreiber of Dimeling, Schreiber & Park, the Philadelphia investment firm that bought the perfume-manufacturing operation in July 1999 Dana Classic Fragrances Inc., which holds the trademark to the names and formulas and markets and sells the perfumes, will continue to operate - but officials...

<p>Booms are not all alike. Nor slumps. Shocks and institutions are never exactly the same. Yet the late 1990s boom, the slide into slump and recent rebound has a striking similarity to the boom of the roaring 1920s, the deep decline in the early '30s and initial rebound. I see the two experiences as primarily driven by analogous forces and common mechanisms -- both non-monetary. And I believe that the rest of the present decade will tend, barring new shocks, to resemble the rest of the '30s -- a recovery with investment and employment below historical norms.</p>

As Chancellor Schröder grapples with a seriously sick economy, he is making the same mistakes which led to the 1930s crisis that opened the door for Hitler, writes historian Niall Ferguson Never say the Germans lack a sense of humour. They like to call Frankfurt “Mainhattan” (a pun on the River Main on whose banks it stands). What makes that funny — well, almost — is the yawning gulf between Germany’s financial capital and its American counterpart on the Hudson. New York has had its troubles just lately. Quite apart from 9/11, there’s no guarantee that the slide on the...