Graphic Grandeur (Supply and Demented Edition)

 

It's a truism in American politics that people vote with their pocketbook.

Sometimes to confusing effect:

Cartoon by Drew Sheneman.

A Runaway Production

 

Now it's movies?

All I know is Jon Voight's name has been bandied about. Has to do with the company he keeps.

 

 

"Hey! I'm walkin' here!"

 

This Day in History

Out with the old, and in with the new. That's the old on the left, President Herbert Hoover, a short car ride away from losing his job. That's the new on the right, Hoover's replacement, President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

"Do you, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, solemnly swear..."

"We have nothing...

 ...to fear...

 ...but fear...

 ...itself."

Well, those aren't exactly profiles in courage we see in the above three pictures. So what's going on? Runs on the bank, and I ain't talkin' a jog along side the river. In the three years since the Stock Market Crash of 1929, a few banks had gone insolvent and closed up shop, sometime without giving the depositors their money back because they were...insolvent. When that happens enough times, people begin deciding they'd better take out their money BEFORE the bank closes, which sometimes assures that banks NORMALLY solvent enough not to close...close. This all came to a head about the time Roosevelt took office. So, to stop it happening some more, he and the Congress decided...

...to close ALL of the banks. For four days at least.

How to explain this to a panicked American public?

With the aid of that newfangled invention: the radio. On March 12, 1933, eight days after taking office, the President took to the airwaves:

That did the trick. Fears were calmed, the banks started re-opening the very next day, and the nation began its long climb out of the Great Depression.

All well and good, but I wonder, suppose there had been a different president back then, and suppose there had been Twitter back then? It might have gone something like this...

FAKE NEWS! Regulators are losers. I like Smoot-Hawley. John Steinbeck's wife is ugly. Sad.

Sizing It Up...or Down

The financial industry?

Too big to fail.

The middle-class?

The jury's still out on that one.

The China Syndrome

In an interview for the Financial Times, President Obama's chief economic advisor, Larry Summers, predicted that the American economy will become "less consumption-oriented"; "more export oriented"; "less energy-production-oriented"; "more environmentally-oriented"; "less financial-engineering-oriented"; "more bio- and software- and civil-engineering-oriented"; "less oriented to income growth that is disproportionate towards a very small share of the population"; and "more middle-class-oriented."

After reading that, I'm feeling a little disoriented.

Quips and Quotations (Special Nostalgia Edition)

Greed, for want of a better word, is good.

--from the movie Wall Street (1987)

You and I are both such similar creatures, Vivian. We both screw people for money.

--from the movie Pretty Woman (1990)

Money, it's a hit
Don't give me that do goody good bullshit

--Pink Floyd (1973)