You may recall that in the late summer of 2008, the American stock market as well as the American banking system took a terrible nose dive. From that time forward, there have been legions of analyses by learned scholars who hoped to tell you what was wrong. As always, there were political arguments. The Republicans, who set a record with their profligate spending during the Bush administration, announced that they were in favor of fiscal responsibility at long last. The Democrats, under President Obama, seem to have concluded that the only way we could deal with this downturn was to spend our way out of it.
I am not much of an economist but I tend to side with Paul Krugman, who is a professor at Princeton and who writes a column twice a week for the New York Times. Krugman says that we are not spending enough to turn the tide against the depression. But on the other hand, we are now spending on behalf of the government in terms of not billions of dollars but trillions of them.
Learned scholars appear on television to explain what went wrong and how to fix it. There is no unanimity on what went wrong, nor is there unanimity on how to fix it. But there is one case where unanimity exists.
That case exists in their frequent references to how bleak things were in the Depression of 1929. Somehow those learned scholars, none of whom were born until well after the Depression of 1929, are not inhibited from finding flaws in our financial arrangements of the 1930s. I was somewhat unaware of this but apparently there was a grand downturn in our financial situation shortly after the Second World War in 1945 and early 1946. I was trying to recover from life in the American Army at that time and I thought things were just dandy. But according to the scholars, we were in a great mess that was not as serious as the Depression but one that compared to the difficulties that we find ourselves in today.
I do not make a habit of reading economic textbooks, so I am unable to compete with the learned scholars. But on the other hand, it must be observed that I was wide awake during the Depression that started in 1929 and in the economic downturn after World War II. When the scholars recite the flaws that led us into the Great Depression or the downturn after the Second World War, they seem to be reciting ancient history. For a young man in his 30s or 40s or 50s or even his 60s, that is understandable. They were not alive at the time and the events of 1929 and of 1945 and 1946 are ancient history to them. On the other hand, an old geezer such as myself tends to regard those events as current ones. When the commentators pontificate, I am tempted to scream at the television set, “Hey man, I was there!” In the final analysis, this is not a matter of economic wisdom but rather a function of birth dates.
I have no real objection to commentators who recite this litany of events as though it were ancient history. To them, I suppose it is all of that. For me and my brethren of the same age, the events of the Depression and of World War II are never to be forgotten. It seems like yesterday.
None of the 400 essays that I have written or dictated since 1998 have to do with the Depression and none have to do with combat experience during the Second World War. The humiliations and degradations that took place during the Depression were so great that I have been unable to compose an essay about them. Secondly, war has no glory for me. It is a ghastly experience. But all of this is of no moment to the economic commentators that appear on television endlessly. They can go on claiming that the events of 1929 and the Second World War were ancient history and I can go on screaming at the television set, “Hey man, I was there!” This seems to be a fairly even tradeoff.
PS: Upon reflection, my memory tells me that I did write one essay about combat in World War II. It had to do with the events on December 8, 1943, when German gunners, both aloft and on the ground, shot down the plane in which I was the aerial engineer and gunner.
I wrote that essay because of the date of the incident. Ten years later, in 1953, the elder Carr daughter was taken from a foster home into our family on that date. The second daughter was born on that date in 1956. I intended to tell my daughters about what happened on December 8th in years past, which accounts for my having written the essay. I would be forced to say that one transgression of the rule in 86 years is not too bad of a performance. But as my parents would say, “Don’t let it happen again!”
E. E. CARR
May 2, 2009
Essay 381
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Kevin’s commentary: I hope on the one hand that there will be future transgressions of that rule, but I don’t want Pop to have to dredge up painful memories to do so. Honestly my reasons are selfish; I have, through the course of around 300 essays so far, become familiar with much of Pop’s life but there are two and a half holes in what I know. I say two and a half because I can contextually assemble bits and pieces, but for the most part his things that he won’t write about represent things that I just don’t know.
This is, of course, his prerogative and probably for the best. But I still wonder. In the final analysis, though, I’d bet that the benefit of writing isn’t worth the cost of doing so.
Oh, and I’m a fan of Krugman too. Right on.