The Great Depression, redux?

David Blomstrom said:

"About all I can say is that I'm so disgusted with both establishment corruption and public apathy and stupidity, that part of me is actually grinning at the thought of another Great Depression."

I hear you, David. Sometimes I get so frustrated with the kind of people Jay Leno features on "Jaywalking"; who seem so ignorant of history and-or current events that I wonder how they survived to reach adulthood.

I also hear what you say about privatization. It sounds good in theory but in practice it makes it much harder to regulate and oversee and root out corruption and abuse.

The bright side is that the public does seem to be more engaged in this Presidential election than in any I can remember in my lifetime. That doesn't mean they will base their votes on reason rather than emotionalism or tribalism or class consciousness, but we can hope.

The idea of a "federal crime" is an oxymoron, excepting only treason IIRC.

There were also piracies & high-seas felonies & counterfeiting, as stated in Article I. And methinks the original understanding of the Necessary & Proper Clause would have authorized criminal statutes necessary to the execution of an enumerated power - e.g., non-payment of federal taxes & customs duties, infringement of patents & copyrights, immigration violations.

It's worth noting that while the Sedition Act is now viewed as an offense against the First Amendment, at the time, citing the 10th Amendment in combination with the concept of enumerated powers was probably a stronger one. Particularly given the strong antecedents of seditious libel in early American jurisprudence.

But in general, methinks you are correct; with minor exceptions, criminal law was supposed to be left to the states.

Is this as bad as it was during the Great Depression? Nope. Not nearly. Could it get that bad? Maybe. But we have a long, long way to go. I wish people could really go back in time in their heads and realize that in the late 1920s it was like Citibank, Bank of America, HSBC, and every other major bank going bust one after the other, AND a couple of AIGs thrown in as well. Oh, and, btw, we had a drought in the West and farms weren't producing and...on and on and on. Now THAT was bad. I don't really think you can compare "depressions." 1932 was nothing like 1893. Why compare them? And nothing the world has ever seen comes close to how bad 1932 was. Economists are still scratching their heads at how it could possibly have gotten that bad. I don't like the cloud of panic this kind of out-of-context reporting produces. It's misleading and irresponsible.

And, btw, yes, the government is now in the mortgage business. We own 80% of AIG. BUT, the company's worth about $1 trillion -- too much for the private sector to absorb; it's failure could have caused serious systemic fallout if the government did nothing. This way, we prevent that fallout from happening and, more than likely, the taxpayers' hard-earned money will see a tidy profit from this in a few years. That's right. The government could/probably will make money off this transaction. Is this "nationalization"? I don't think so.