Lewis Lapham Discusses FDR’s New Deal with Adam Cohen
The World in Time

Unemployment: The 1930s and Today

Bob Murphy, Author of the Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression & New Deal

Robert Murphy: Busting the Myth of Green Jobs

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Robert P. Murphy – BookTV: The Politically Incorrect Guide

Austrian vs. Neoclassical Analytics

Authors Forum: “Human Action” Study Guide

Dr Robert Murphy “Repeating Mistakes of The Great Depression” Nassau, Bahamas Part 1/7

Dr Robert Murphy “Repeating Mistakes of The Great Depression” Nassau, Bahamas Part 2/7

Dr Robert Murphy “Repeating Mistakes of The Great Depression” Nassau, Bahamas Part 3/7

Dr Robert Murphy “Repeating Mistakes of The Great Depression” Nassau, Bahamas Part 4/7

Dr Robert Murphy “Repeating Mistakes of The Great Depression” Nassau, Bahamas Part 5/7

Dr Robert Murphy “Repeating Mistakes of The Great Depression” Nassau, Bahamas Part 6/7

Dr Robert Murphy “Repeating Mistakes of The Great Depression” Nassau, Bahamas Part 7/7

Background Articles and Videos

Robert Murphy

“…Robert P. “Bob” Murphy (born 23 May 1976) is an Austrian School economist and free market-oriented author.

Murphy completed his Bachelor of Arts in economics at Hillsdale College in 1998. He then moved back to his home state of New York to continue his studies at New York University. Murphy earned his Ph.D. in economics from NYU in 2003 after successfully defending a dissertation on Unanticipated Intertemporal Change in Theories of Interest.^[1]

Murphy is married to Rachael Murphy (née Fajardo) with whom he has one son, Joel Clark Murphy, and lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Murphy is a Christian, and has stated in his writings that “my ethical beliefs are informed by my Christian faith, and I am a firm believer in natural law.”^[2]

After earning his doctoral degree, Murphy served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics at Hillsdale College in Michigan, U.S., a role he relinquished in the summer of 2006 when he moved back to New York City. From 2006 until early 2007, Murphy was employed as a research and portfolio analyst with Laffer Associates,^[3][4] an economic and investment consultancy firm.^[5]

Murphy is a senior fellow in business and economic studies at the Pacific Research Institute,^[6] and is an adjunct scholar and frequent speaker at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He writes a column for Townhall.com^[7] and has also written for LewRockwell.com. He is an adjunct scholar at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy^[8] and an economist for the Institute for Energy Research.^[9] Murphy appeared before the United States House Committee on Financial Services on 24 July 2008 to discuss oil prices and the United States dollar.^[10] His work has been cited by Walter Block,^[11] with whom Murphy has also published.^[12] Murphy is a frequent radio guest. He appeared on “Free Markets With Dr. Mike Beitler” on the Voice America Business network on October 30, 2008. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_P._Murphy

Economists Can Be Hilarious

By Robert Murphy

“…We economists have a reputation for being dry and boring. That’s why Ben Stein’s scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off works so well — and why this guy is such a novelty. Given our dismal reputation, I am happy to report that some economists’ recent defenses of the efficient-markets hypothesis are laugh-out-loud funny. Outside Cirque du Soleil, you will not see such contortions as when these economists try to defend their theory from either refutation or triviality. …”

http://mises.org/daily/3835

Apologist Responses to Climategate Misconstrue the Real Debate (Quantitative, not Qualitative)

by Robert Murphy

“…These defenses are self-evidently absurd to anyone who has read the actual CRU emails in question. The public’s faith in the sacrosanct “peer-review process” will be understandably shaken when they read just how this “consensus” was enforced. Furthermore, the real debate was not between ultra-skeptics who say “global warming is a hoax” versus professional climate scientists who say “anthropogenic climate change is real.”

No, the true debate has been among practicing climatologists, with some arguing that the global climate’s sensitivity to a doubling of greenhouse gas concentrations may be well below the IPCC AR4’s reported range of 2C – 4.5C. If these “skeptics”–such as Richard Lindzen, Pat Michaels, and Roy Spencer–are right, then the case for large-scale government intervention to penalize carbon emissions is considerably weakened.

In this context, the evidence brought to light by “Climategate” may be very significant, because it reaffirms the chinks in the IPCC armor that the educated skeptics have been pointing out for years. It’s true, an email from Phil Jones by itself doesn’t make Richard Lindzen right or wrong, but when policymakers need to decide which scientific experts they can trust, then the CRU emails are very relevant. …”

“…The scholarly skeptics do not doubt that the earth is warmer now than it was in 1850, and they don’t doubt that higher global temperatures would have noticeable effects on migratory patterns, ice sheets, and so forth. The real debate has been and continues to be: What fraction of this warming can be attributed to human activities? And then extrapolating, what will be the likely impacts on the climate if economic activity continues on its present trajectory?

When it comes to nuanced questions such as these–as opposed to loud mouths declaring, “Global warming is a hoax!”–the CRU emails and computer code are very revealing. Those of us who are not experts on climate models now have proof that the official line that “the science is settled” was a bluff. Of course it’s still possible that the IPCC projections may turn out to be accurate when all is said and done, but the confidence we should right now place in their modeling is much lower than what their biggest enthusiasts have been assuring us for years. …”

http://www.masterresource.org/2009/12/sarcastic-responses-to-climategate-misconstrue-the-real-debate/

Mises Daily, Robert P. Murphy

http://mises.org/articles.aspx?AuthorId=380

Free Advice, Robert P. Murphy

http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/

Web Site of Robert P. Murphy, PhD.

http://consultingbyrpm.com/

Bob Murphy at Oil/Dollar Hearing 7/24/08 (Part 1 of 2)

Bob Murphy at Oil/Dollar Hearing 7/24/08 (Part 2 of 2)

Why You’ve Never Heard of the Great Depression of 1920

Conversations With History: Lessons from FDR’s New Deal

The Great Depression and the Current Recession–Robert Higgs–Videos
 

Related Posts On Pronk Palisades

The Battle For The World Economy–Videos

Frederic Bastiat–The Law–Videos

Yaron Brook–Videos

Friedrich Hayek–Videos

The Great Depression and the Current Recession–Robert Higgs–Videos

Milton Friedman–Videos

Milton Friedman on Education–Videos

Ludwig von Mises–Videos

The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged and The Ideas of Ayn Rand

Murray Rothbard–Videos

Rothbard On Keynes–Videos

Peter Schiff–Videos

Schiff, Forbers and Bloomberg Nail The Financial Crisis and Recession–Mistakes Were Made–Greed, Arrogance, Stupidity–Three Chinese Curses!

L. William Seidman on The Economic Crisis: Causes and Cures–Videos

Amity Shlaes–Videos

Julian Simon–Videos

Thomas Sowell and Conflict of Visions–Videos

Thomas E. Woods, Jr.–Videos

Banking Cartel’s Public Relations Campaign Continues:Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke On The Record

November 25, 1932
Indianapolis, Indiana
The day after Thanksgiving

Mama and Papa believe in cold. That’s why I tell Lady we have nothing to fear. You see, Mama and Papa have toughened us up on the sleeping porch. That’s where we sleep with no heat and just screens, and not just in summer but all through the fall and beginning again in early spring.

This paragraph opens a book from the Dear America series called Christmas After All: The Great Depression Diary of Minnie Swift, Indianapolis, Indiana 1932 by Kathryn Lasky. I’m a firm believer in children’s books when it comes to taking the first step in learning from history. Not only does this book befit the season, it befits the current economic climate as well.

One detail I like is Minnie’s loathing of her mother’s Au Gratin meals: stretching food out with cheese and flour to make enough for everyone. Potatoes Au Gratin sounds yummy but imagine it with cauliflower. “Ten on the Vomitron scale,” Minnie describes.

Lasky doesn’t stay away from the subject of suicide. Characters in the book take their lives just like they did back then. Depression-era comedian Eddie Cantor once requested a room on the 19th floor of a hotel. The clerk asked, “Is it for sleeping or jumping?”

The worst tale so far in the book was President Herbert Hoover’s treatment of the World War 1 vets. They camped out wanting their bonuses for fighting the war. Not only did Hoover ignore their pleas he sent the police after them. Minnie’s dad called him “That Fool Hoover.” Now THAT was the worst president.

Today, some people think we are living in a bad time. There were much worse times. After each era ended, we stated such as after the Holocaust, “Never again.”

We fear terrorists destroying the country today but remember the Cold War? Look at the fear we had during the life of the Berlin Wall. We thought any sign of aggression a bomb would destroy our planet and we’d live in a nuclear winter for the rest of our lives. Look at the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 when JFK’s officials went to bed not knowing if the country would still be there in the morning.

I grew up during the Carter era with lines for gas miles long. And it got better. During that time, we suffered disco music and polyester leisure suits. Then along came Reagan with the rise of the personal computer and the fall of communism. Think about it. We threw away our lava lamps and took up the internet. We evolved.

And we’ll keep on truckin.’

Obama’s sellout to Wall Street creates ‘permanent bailout’

Hobsons choice?

What is on the table

Two of the G-7 countries are bankrupt – US and Britain. Their industrial base was supported by raw materials and captive markets – acquired by genocide, and the loot of centuries.

European banks are emerging from the credit crisis bigger than before, posing more risk to their national economies. BNP Paribas, Barclays and Banco Santander are among at least 353 European lenders that have increased in size since the beginning of 2007. Fifteen European banks now have assets larger than their home economies, compared with 10 lenders three years ago. (via European banks growing bigger, sowing seeds for the next crisis).

Concentration of power

What this growth has done is increase the concentration of risk, capital, power, manipulation into the hands of a few people. With Europe, USA and Japan dominating the Fortune 500 listing, with Super-mega corporations, the  outlook for dilution of power and risk seems bleak and remote.

The other risk is again the full-employment economic model. Mega corporations, which can be easily controlled at arm’s length by the State, dominate the economic sphere. Power is concentrated in the hands of less than 0.1% of the population. Less than 300,000 people control the US economy of more than 30 crore people (300 million).

Jobs for everyone

So, what happens to the 99.9% people who do not control the economy?

They are given jobs. They become employees, associates, apprentices, trainees, understudies, etc – who will fulfill the purpose of these 300,000 people-in-power – from the media and academia, public and private sector, NGOs and Government, bureaucrats and business managers.

Sleight of hand

And while our attention diverted by war, crisis, threats, the real game is being played somewhere else – out of sight and out of bounds.

Self employment, independence, small business are driven out of business by channeling increasing amounts of debt to organizations controlled by the O.1% of the powerful people.

This growth in banks beyond the size or the home economies signifies greater concentration of wealth – and not less. The world would do well to remember that East India Company was after all a company, a private company!

Capitalism was always about controlling capital

Public sector economies of Europe

The economies of France, Germany and Italy are practically run by public sector monopolies – or subsidized behemoths, who make survival of competitors difficult by their ability to sustain losses – based on Government largesse.

Spain and Britain have all but collapsed! Which way will the US jump – will it also go the public sector way – go the Spanish way? By the way, the national industry in Spain these days is prostitution!

Which bring me to another question!

The lure of ‘capitalism’ …

Why is the West so keen on calling these publc sector, subsidy driven regimes as Capitalism? Capitalism dpended on looted capital and slave labour to prosper – resulting in the famous ‘laissez faire’ quip. Capitalists wanted and got ‘laissez faire’ capitalism – which was a ‘coda’ for unlimited slavery. The restrictions on laissez faire were actually restrictions on slaves.

Coverup .. Papered over .. Spit and polish ...

Now under socialism, they get unlimited protection from ‘destructive’ competition. Which is being papered over by names like crony capitalism, free market capitalism. etc.,  etc.

Look at Spain and Britain

Spain’s national industry today is prostitution. Britain is floating on the sewage of the Bretton Woods bilge! After the multi-trillion dollar bailout, which has just begun, and with more than US$4 trillion with China, Japan, Russia and India, neither is the outcome certain nor is the outlook bright.

Last but not the least, we must remember the power wielded by the Chartered Companies of Europe – another word for public sector.  East India Company was a public sector company!

The Rest of the World needs to be careful of these public sector monsters!

Public sector or oblivion

During the Great Depression, more than 19 auto companies (similar to the number of banks today) were folded into the Big 3. The Big 3 lived to fight for another 70 years. In their death throes, the US Big Auto is likely to go the way European auto sector has gone – public sector or oblivion.

Saddam lives (through his words)

The way it looks, it will mean the Mother Of All Mergers. At which point, there is no team of accountants in the world who can figure out what is where, or what condition what is in? And then the evasions, the lies the obfuscation can continue for some more decades?

Which model will US follow – public sector or closure? Subsidies or welfare?

Each time the music stops, there are fewer players left

Real low … real truth (seen an oxymoron like that?)

The real question – who will pay for it?

Not the Americans! No siree. Definitely not.

Neither the American super-rich or the American welfare-poor? Not the American tax payers or the American tax evaders? Not the American Whites or the American Blacks?

It is the Chinese, the Russians, Indians, Brazilians and above all the Africans will pay for this! They have done, what bankers call non-recourse lending! The Chinese, Russians, Indians, Brazilians and the Africans, have no recourse. Who will the Chinese go to, for redeeming their US$2 trillion?

The bankrupt US of A? Welcome to the real world.

Transportation – US auto is down – but not yet out. It will limp along for few more decades.

China's ARJ21

Boeing will face fresh competition from BRICS – Brazil’s Embraer, Russia’s (Ilyushin)  and the Chinese (passenger jet programme). US electronics is stagnant – and fading power.

Computing Equipment – The US is still the prime force in the computing industry – though not on the manufacturing side. Chinese manufacturing is the dominant force in computer manufacturing.

Energy – US oil industry no longer dominates international markets the way they did in mid-20th century. The US Nuclear industry faces increasing competition from a public sector French and Russian industry – and India is planning to add its ‘frugal engineering’ muscle to this segment.

Higher education may save the day – What will sustain the competitiveness of the US industry – with out the dollar hegemony? The US education system is still significantly productive (measured in terms of patents, Nobel prizes, innovation, output, research papers, etc.). The US higher education system is notoriously hobbled by a weak school education system. How long will that advantage last – without an infusion of foreign talent?

The US entertainment industry remains the biggest in the West – and by many measures in the world also. Partially controlled by the Japanese, it however remains significantly competitive and dominating.

Agriculture is more fragile than estimated … The seemingly strong position of the US in agriculture is based on two aspects. Massive direct subsidies – of more than 8 billion dollars. And indirect subsidies of possibly another US$ 8 billion. Most of which goes to the 46000 farmers who account for 50% of the US agricultural production.

Communication technology – The communication sector has again seen the erosion of US competitiveness – with the domination of GSM technology seemingly solid for another 10-15 years. The long term direction for that industry anyways seems like IP-protocol systems. This may well result in commoditization of network equipment and terminal – and the increased importance of content. Low and medium switching technology may see greater commoditization with the eclipse of Cisco by the Chinese switch companies.

Green is still in the red … Environment engineering provides no major advantage to the US. Solar panels, wind energy equipment, hydrogen technology have all seen greater diffusion of leadership and market share. It may not give greater opportunity to the USA.

Finance and banking – The global financial markets were dominated by the US organizations in the past – but with the global financial crisis and the end to dollar dominance may see reduced clout for US firms. Their position will become broadly similar to current position of Swiss banks – mildly competitive, solid history, fading reputation.

Outlook – With such an outlook over the next 10-25 years, what the US leadership may focus on is Arctic oil. Oil will remain a strategic asset only with high prices (slower production increase and faster demand growth) and if no other energy source appears. Oil finds in the Atlantic and Pacific republics may spoil the party – for instance, Cuban oil.

Much like the respite of the North Sea oil to Britain, Arctic oil may provide a temporary halt to the slide in US economic dominance.

If the US can lay its hands on a significant part of it!

France, Germany, Canada, Italy  and Australia (not in G7) are tethering on the brink – under the weight of their social security system, and most of their business is in the public sector. A geriatric Japan is dependent almost entirely on exports to these declining seven. Japan’s investment in India and China has been negligible.

The US strategy

Most ‘future-of-China’ debates are incomplete as they miss a very important element -  the American template for co-opting client states. Let us call this as US-Client-Acquisition Programme (USCAP). The outcome and China’s economic future is tied to access to US markets, capital, technology, businesses – very closely.

Club de USA

The US has successfully executed US-Client-Acquisition-Programme (USCAP) a most out-sized ‘conquest’ in history. By using these economic levers, it has successfully created client states across Europe, SE Asia, Japan, etc. Some economies have taken the bait, used US incentives and become ‘successful’ client states.

Some prospective  clients states have fallen by the wayside. South American failures, the Middle East, Pakistan, post-Gorbachev Russian reluctance have been signal failures of  American recruitment.

The 2 trillion trap

Similar to the success of the Europeans, the Japanese, Koreans and the Asian Tigers, China too has embraced the US-client state model. Booming exports to the US, massive FDI by the US in the Chinese economy, has put China in the earlier position of Japan and Korea – prime sub-contractors to the US economy. Where the Chinese economy seems to ‘partially different’ is the military side. On foreign policy and ‘American’ culture, the Chinese have been ’superficially’ resistant and nominally ‘assertive’.

The Chinese miracle, much like the ASEAN, Japanese and European miracles before, is using exports to the USA as a stepping stone. Chinese growth and expansion depends on access to the US markets and a devalued currency. For how long will the US allow the Chinese to do that? Another 5 years – or is it 10 years.

As for India

India is unlikely to drastically change its trajectory.Its economic success will continue evenly, based on its entrepreneurial class. Its public sector engagement will reduce.

It is likely to improve its relation with China, Russia and the US. EU will continue with own perception of self-importance. The crucial factor defining India’s position will be Pakistan. Will India continue whine about Pakistan – or will take some covert /overt action against the twenty off terrorist training camps? Will it take charge of stabilizing Afghanistan?

China’s assertiveness will lessen in the face of resolute Indian actions – and not moral posturing or protests. While the moral under pinning is certainly essential, the Indian position will need reinforcement.

In the early 20th century, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world. While Great Britain ’s maritime power and its far-flung empire had propelled it to a dominant position among the world’s industrialized nations, only the United States challenged Argentina for the position of the world’s second-most powerful economy.

It was blessed with abundant agriculture, vast swaths of rich farmland laced with navigable rivers and an accessible port system. Its level of industrialization was higher than many European countries: railroads, automobiles and telephones were commonplace.

In 1916, a new president was elected. H ipólito Irigoyen had formed a party called The Radicals under the banner of “fundamental change” with an appeal to the middle class.

Among Irigoyen’s changes: mandatory pension insurance, mandatory health insurance, and support for low-income housing construction to stimulate the economy. Put simply, the state assumed economic control of a vast swath of the country’s operations and began assessing new payroll taxes to fund its efforts.

With an increasing flow of funds into these entitlement programs, the government’s payouts soon became overly generous. Before long its outlays surpassed the value of the taxpayers’ contributions. Put simply, it quickly became under-funded, much like the  United States ‘ Social Security and Medicare programs.

The death knell for the Argentine economy, however, came with the election of Juan Perón. Perón had a fascist and corporatist upbringing; he and his charismatic wife aimed their populist rhetoric at the nation’s rich.

This targeted group “swiftly expanded to cover most of the propertied middle classes, who became an enemy to be defeated and humiliated.”

Under Perón, the size of government bureaucracies exploded through massive programs of social spending and by encouraging the growth of labor unions.

High taxes and economic mismanagement took their inevitable toll even after Perón had been driven from office. But his populist rhetoric and “contempt for economic realities” lived on. Argentina’s federal government continued to spend far beyond its means.

Hyperinflation exploded in 1989, the final stage of a process characterized by “industrial protectionism, redistribution of income based on increased wages, and growing state intervention in the economy…”

The Argentinean government’s practice of printing money to pay off its public debts had crushed the economy. Inflation hit 3000%, reminiscent of the Weimar  Republic . Food riots were rampant; stores were looted; the country descended into chaos.

And by 1994,  Argentina ’s public pensions — the equivalent of Social Security — had imploded. The payroll tax had increased from 5% to 26%, but it wasn’t enough. In addition,  Argentina had implemented a value-added tax (VAT), new income taxes, a personal tax on wealth, and additional revenues based upon the sale of public enterprises. These crushed the private sector, further damaging the economy.

A government-controlled “privatization” effort to rescue seniors’ pensions was attempted. But, by 2001, those funds had also been raided by the government, the monies replaced by Argentina ’s defaulted government bonds.

By 2002, “…government fiscal irresponsibility… induced a national economic crisis as severe as  America ’s Great Depression.”

************************************************************************* * *

In 1902  Argentina was one of the world’s richest countries. Little more than a hundred years later, it is poverty-stricken, struggling to meet its debt obligations amidst a drought.

We’ve seen this movie before. The Democrats’ populist plans can’t possibly work, because government bankrupts everything it touches. History teaches us that ObamaCare and unfunded entitlement programs will be utter, complete disasters.

Today’s Democrats are guilty of more than stupidity; they are enslaving future generations to poverty and misery. And they will be long gone when it all implodes. They will be as cold and dead as Juan Perón when the piper must ultimately be paid.

Exxon Calls for a Carbon Tax, Again.

TreeHugger
August 17, 2009

Another possible reason for Exxon’s sudden support could be good old fashioned political gamesmanship–the idea of a carbon tax is potentially extremely unpopular (as is anything that includes the word “tax” in its moniker). If the company has reason to believe a carbon tax is very unlikely to actually pass Australian parliament, it can voice support for it and appear environmentally inclined without having to make any actual adjustments. However, Exxon makes for a powerful voice of support, and having the oil giant in favor could draw other businesses’, politicians’, and citizen support for a carbon tax, which could eventually create stricter regulations on the oil giant than a cap would.

On Tuesday, December 1, 2009, LewRockwell.com featured an article with the headline, “Famine or Gold Standard: Charles Goyette on the choice before us.” The article itself is entitled, “Parallel Universes,” and is a fictional account.

But wait. The U.S. was on a gold standard from 1929-1932. Did that prevent the Great Depression? No, it did not. It didn’t prevent the 20%+ unemployment, the 88% drop in the Dow Jones, nor the 5000+ bank/S&L failures during that period.

The Federal Reserve was to blame, you say? Yes, but only in part. The Federal Reserve existed while the U.S. was on a gold standard. Those two variables are conflated, and therefore, one can’t say with certainty that one was to blame and the other wasn’t, or that one factor was more to blame than the other, unless you measure the effect of each,  independently of the other.

Kian terintegrasinya sistem keuangan memberikan dampak bukan saja kepada jumlah transaksinya, tetapi juga jenisnya. Apa pun jenis kegiatan keuangan pada akhirnya akan bermuara kepada suatu transaksi keuangan yang dieksekusi melalui perbankan. Oleh sebab itu, sektor perbankan apabila tidak dikelola dengan baik akan menghancurkan kredibilitasnya sebagai lembaga kepercayaan.

Keterkaitan sektor perbankan dengan stabilitas sistem kengan bukan hanya dalam hal fungsinya sebagai penyelenggara dan pengelola transaksi, tetapi juga karena fungsinya sebagai lembaga intermediasi dan transmisi moneter. Peran dan fungsi perbankan yang strategis itulah yang menyebabkan dalam setiap krisis selalu ada upaya bagaimana menjaga stabilitas perbankan.

Tata kelola bank di negara man pun selalu ketat dan cenderung sangat ketat (over regulated), dengan alasan utamanya adalah menjag kepercayaan masyarakat. Namun demikian, tetap berlaku juga norma umum bahwa di antara yang baik selalu saja ada yang tidak baik. Oleh sebab itu, sekalipun sangat ketat tata kelolanya selalu saja ada tindak kejahatan di perbankan.

Kejahatan perbankan yang pada umumnya terjadi disebabkan oleh apa yang disebut dengan error omission dan error commission. Apa yang dimaksud dengan error omission adalah kejahatan yang dilakukan dengan secara sengaja melanggar peraturan yang ada. Sedangkan error commission adalah kejahatan yang dilakukan karena tidak ada atau belum ada peraturannya. Tentunya banyak penyebab mengapa selalu terjadi error omission maupun error commission, akan tetapi hasilnya sama, yaitu terjadinya kegagalan bank.

Menyelamatkan bank pada ahirnya menjadi salah satu solusi baik dalam rangka menjaga kepercayaan maupun stabilitas sistem keuangan yang tentunya akan berujung pada terjaganya kesinambungan perekonomian. Mengapa Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), yaitu lembaga penjamin simpanan di Amerika Serikat, didirikan pada tahun 1936, tidak lain sebagai jawaban atas terjadinya krisis ekonomi yang luar biasa (great depression) pada tahun 1933.

Semenjak Amerika Serikat mempunyai FIDC, pada akhirnya semua negara menyadari diperlukannya lembaga serupa sehingga hampir di seluruh negara telah mempunyai lembaga penjaminan simpanan. Tujuannya pada umumnya sama, yaitu antara lain menjamin dana simpanan dan menyelamatkan atau tidak menyelamatkan bank.

Biaya mahal

Mengapa menyelamatkan bank sebagai pilihan (yang) pada hakikat(nya) krisis keuangan yang berdampak kepada krisis perbankan menimbulkan biaya yang menjadi beban fiskal, yang harus ditanggung pemerintah.

Honohan dan Klingebiel (2003) memperkirakan besarnya untuk mengatasi biaya krisis perbankan berkisar 13 persen dari GDP. Dengan mempertimbangkan besaran biaya tersebut, ada kecenderungan pemerintah dan lembaga pengawas perbankan menghindari untuk menutup bank gagal (Klingebiel dan Laeven, 2003).

Pascakrisris, baik yang terkadi tahun 1997 maupun tahun 2007, banyak negara yang mengalami kejadian yang sama, yaitu terjadinya kegagalan sebuah bank sebagai akibat dari krisis ekonomi. Tidak ketinggalan, di Indonesia mengalami hal yang sama, misalnya penutupan Bak IFI dan kemudian penyelamatan Bank Century.

Penyelamatan Bank Century pada akhirnya menimbulkan polemik. Penyebabnya bisa karena dalam rangka menggunakan hak berdemokrasi, merasa lebih paham, dan mungkin justru tidak paham tetapi harus berkomentar. Harus saya akui dengan jujur, saya tentunya termasuk kriteria tersebut di atas sekali pun tidak ada kesengajaan berniat seperti itu.

Sejatinya mengapa sebuah bank ada yang diselamatkan dan tidak, harus dilihat dari pemikiran secara holistik (menyeluruh dan terkait), yaitu dalam kaitannya menjaga stabilitas sistem perbankan di satu pihak dan menjaga kepercayaan masyarakat di lain pihak. Lebih penting dari itu tentunya adalah sebagai upaya menghilangkan efek domino, baik terhadap sistem perbankan maupun perekonomian dalam arti luas.

Polemik yang terjadi menurut hemat saya bisa terjadi karena ketiadaan kemauan menggunakan “bahasa” yang sama, baik dalam melihat persoalan maupun menyimpulkannya. Pengertian menggunakan “bahasa” yang sama bukan berarti harus disamakan pendapatny, akan tetapi lebih kepada imbauan kalau terjadi perbedaan pendapat itu harus rasional dan proporsional.

Dalam kasus penyelamatan Bank Century misalnya, ada ketidakseimbangan perlakuan dan perhatian. Upaya mengejar pertanggungjawaban pemilik Bank Century berjalan lebih lamban dibandingkan mempersoalkan apakah kegagalan Bank century itu sistemik atau tidak. Ironisnya, pemilik dan pengurusanya sebagian masih bebas berkeliaran di luar negeri. Celakanya, pendapat mereka dikutip seolah-olah pasti tak bersalah.

Seuogoamua semua pihak berpendapat bahwa kalau dapat dibuktikan adanya error omission dan atau error commission baik sebelum dan sesudah penyelamatan Bank Century harus dilakukan secara obyektif, jujur, dan tidak dipolitisasi. Sebab kalau tidak, maka sama artinya kita semua menciptakan ketidakstabilan yang baru, baik di sektor perbankan pada khususnya, dan perekonomian pada umumnya.

Sumber  :

Kasus Century : Menyelamatkan Bank, Krisna Wijaya | Praktisi dan Pengamat Perbankan
Kompas, 02.12.2009

Originally posted at Well Fed on December 2, 2009.

1682, 12th April: I went this afternoon with several of the Royal Society to a supper which was all dressed, both fish and flesh, in Monsieur Papin’s digesters, by which the hardest bones of beef itself, and mutton, were made as soft as cheese, without water or other liquor, and with less than eight ounces of coals, producing an incredible quantity of gravy; and for close of all, a jelly made of the bones of beef, the best for clearness and good relish, and the most delicious that I had ever seen, or tasted. We eat pike and other fish bones, and all without impediment; but nothing exceeded the pigeons, which tasted just as if bak’d in a pie, all these being stewed in their own juice without any addition of water save what swam about in the Digester. . .

Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, F.R.S.

The meal to which Evelyn is referring was cooked by Denis Papin.  Papin prepared it for England’s King Charles II and members of the Royal Society, the British national academy of science, to demonstrate his new cooking apparatus the Digester.  And thus began the nefarious history of the Pressure Cooker.

Fast forward two and a half centuries, America has just emerged from the First Great Depression and the Second World War.  It is the era of the working mother which means there is a need for dinner to hit the table faster but the microwave oven is still more than a decade away.  What’s the modern mom to do?  Enter Monsieur Papin’s Pressure Cooker.  The problem is that those early cookers were a bit on the dangerous side.

Today the same cannot be said.  The Pressure Cooker is superior to the microwave oven for speedy cooking because it does not adversely effect the quality of food.  But just how does one use the Digester?  Enter Pamela Rice Hahn.

Hahn, the author of more than 20 books, has just released The Everything Pressure Cookbook (Adams Media) and it is your entrance to the world of pressure cookery.  The author takes you on a quick trip through the history of the device as well as tips and safety measures.  Oh yeah, and 300 recipes for everything from jams and preserves to entrées and even desserts.

So just how fast is pressure cooking?  Remember grandma cooking her pot roast for hours?  Hahn’s takes 45 minutes.  Fall-off-the-bones pork ribs – 55 minutes.  Cheesecake cooks in just eight.  And the quality is just as good if not better than traditional methods.  Professionals have rediscovered this cooking method to handle the extreme time constraints of cooking contests like Iron Chef and Top Chef, too.  If it’s good enough for an Iron Chef then it’s good enough for you.

Hvad er depression?

Depression er ikke en svaghed, men er normalt en alvorlig sygdom eller et syndrom (gruppe af symptomer) med biologiske, psykologiske og sociale aspekter, som
involverer kroppen, humør, og tanker, der påvirker den måde, hvorpå en person mener om ting, spiser og sover, hvilket ofte afspejler en trist stemning over normal tristhed eller sorg. Mennesker med en depression, også kaldet [blues, modløshed, tristhed, sorg, melankoli] kan ikke bare “tage sig sammen” og få det bedre. Uden behandling, Symptomerne kan vare i uger, måneder og endda år. De vigtigste former for depression er svær depression, dysthymia, og bipolar sygdom. Dog kan en passende behandling hjælpe de fleste mennesker med depression.

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Er depression et stort fællesskab sundhedsproblem?

Depression er generelt placeret i forhold til sværhedsgrad [mild, moderat eller svær]. Graden af din depression, som din læge kan afgøre, indflydelse på, hvordan du bliver behandlet. Depression er som regel først identificeret i en primær-pleje indstilling, ikke i en mental sundhed praktiserende kontor. Desuden er det ofte antager forskellige forklædninger, som forårsager depression skal ofte under-diagnosticeret. Depression symptomer er karakteriseret ikke blot ved negative tanker, stemninger, og adfærd, men også af specifikke forandringer af kropsfunktioner (for eksempel uregelmæssige spise, sove, græde magi, og nedsat libido). Den funktionelle ændringer i klinisk depression er ofte kaldes neurovegetative tegn. Det betyder, at nervesystemet forandringer i hjernen er årsag til mange fysiske, der resulterer i mindre aktivitet og deltagelse. Nogle mennesker med depressioner, specielt bipolar depression (manisk depression), synes at have en nedarvet sårbarhed over for denne betingelse. Depression koster USA enorme mængder af de direkte omkostninger, som er den behandling, omkostninger, og indirekte omkostninger, såsom tabt produktivitet og fravær. I en stor medicinsk undersøgelse, der skyldes depression store problemer med funktionen af de ramte oftere end har gigt, forhøjet blodtryk, kronisk lungesygdom og diabetes, og i to kategorier af problemer, så ofte som koronararteriesygdom. Depression kan øge risikoen for udvikling af koronararteriesygdom, hiv, astma, og nogle andre medicinske sygdomme. Desuden kan det øge sygelighed (sygdom) og mortalitet (død) fra disse betingelser. For fuld tilbagebetaling fra en stemning lidelse, uanset om der er en fældningen faktor, eller det synes at komme ud af det blå, behandling med medicin og / eller elektrochok behandling (ECT) og psykoterapi er nødvendigt.

Hvad forårsager depression

Depression ofte løber i familier. Dette kan skyldes dine gener (gamle), lærte opførsel, eller begge dele. Selv hvis dine gener gør dig mere tilbøjelige til at udvikle depression, en stresset eller ulykkeligt liv begivenhed normalt udløser indtræden af en depressiv episode. Depression kan anlægges af nogen af følgende faktorer:

• Alkohol eller stofmisbrug
• Barndom begivenheder som misbrug eller vanrøgt
• Kronisk stress
• Død af en ven eller slægtning
• Skuffelse hjemme, på arbejdet, eller skole (i teens, kan det være at bryde op med en kæreste eller veninde, ikke en klasse, eller forældre skilt)
• Lægemidler sådan som beroligende og højt blodtryk medicin
• Medicinske sygdomme som hypotyroidisme (underaktiv skjoldbruskkirtlen), kræft, eller hepatitis
• Ernæringsmæssige mangler (såsom mangel på folat og omega-3 fedtsyrer)
• Alt for negative tanker om sig selv og livet, selv skylden, og ineffektiv social problemløsning færdigheder
• Langvarig smerte eller som har en større sygdom
• Søvnproblemer
• Social isolation (almindeligt hos ældre)

Postpartum psykose

Postpartum psykose er en meget alvorlig psykisk sygdom, som kan påvirke nye mødre. Denne sygdom kan ske hurtigt, ofte inden for de første tre måneder efter fødslen. Kvinder kan miste følingen med virkeligheden, ofte med auditive hallucinationer (høre ting, som ikke er rent faktisk sker, som en person, der taler) og vrangforestillinger (se tingene anderledes fra, hvad de er). Visuelle hallucinationer (se ting, som ikke er der) er mindre almindelige. Andre symptomer omfatter søvnløshed (ikke at være i stand til at sove), følelse af uro (uro) og vred, og mærkelige følelser og adfærd. Kvinder, der har postpartum psykose behov for behandling med det samme og næsten altid behov for medicin. Sommetider kvinder er sat ind på hospitalet, fordi de er udsat for risiko for at skade sig selv eller andre. Ikke alle, der er deprimerede eller maniske oplevelser hvert symptom. Nogle mennesker oplever nogle symptomer, og nogle af mange symptomer. Sværhedsgraden af symptomerne varierer også med enkeltpersoner.

Depression symptomer: Lavt selvværd er fælles med depression. Så er pludselige udbrud af vrede og manglende glæde ved aktiviteter, som normalt gør dig glad, herunder køn. Deprimerede børn måske ikke har de klassiske symptomer på voksen depression. Se især for ændringer i skolernes resultater, søvn, og adfærd. Hvis du spekulerer på, om dit barn kan blive deprimeret, det er værd at bringe til en læge opmærksomhed. De vigtigste former for depression kan nævnes: Major depression – fem eller flere af ovenstående symptomer skal være til stede i mindst 2 uger, men svær depression har tendens til at fortsætte i mindst 6 måneder. (Depression er klassificeret som mindre depression, hvis du har færre end fem depression symptomer i mindst 2 uger. Med andre ord, er mindre depression svarer til svær depression, medmindre det kun er 2 til 4 symptomer.) Dysthymia – en generelt mildere form for depression, der holder lige så længe som to år. Atypisk depression – depression ledsaget af usædvanlige symptomer såsom hallucinationer (for eksempel at høre stemmer, der ikke er der) eller vrangforestillinger (irrationelle tanker).

Depression symptomer på manisk depression: Vedvarende trist, angst, eller “tomme” stemning, følelse af håbløshed og pessimisme, skyldfølelse, værdiløshed, hjælpeløshed, tab af interesse eller glæde ved hobbyer og aktiviteter, som engang blev nydt, herunder køn, søvnløshed, tidligt om morgenen opvågning, eller oversleeping, nedsat appetit og / eller vægttab eller overspisning og vægtøgning, træthed, nedsat energi, der er “gået ned” Tanker om død eller selvmord, selvmordsforsøg, rastløshed, irritabilitet, koncentrationsbesvær, huske , træffe beslutninger; Vedvarende fysiske symptomer, der ikke responderer på behandlingen, såsom hovedpine, fordøjelsesproblemer, og kroniske smerter.

Manisk depression symptomer: Uhensigtsmæssig opstemthed; Upassende irritabilitet Svær søvnløshed; Grandiose begreber, øget talehastighed og / eller volumen Afbrudt og væddeløb tanker; øget sexlyst; markant øgede energi dårlig dømmekraft; Upassende sociale adfærd.

Depression medicin anmeldelser

De tidligste udviklede antidepressiva, eksempler på MAO omfatter phenelzin (Nardil) og tranylcypromin (Parnate). MAO hæve niveauet af neurochemicals i hjernens synapser ved at hæmme monoaminooxidasehæmmere. Monoaminoxidase er det vigtigste enzym, der nedbryder neurochemicals, såsom noradrenalin. Når monoaminoxidase hæmmes, at noradrenalin ikke er brudt ned, og dermed mængden af noradrenalin i hjernen øges. MAO også forringe evnen til at nedbryde tyramin, et stof, der findes i alderen ost, vin, de fleste nødder, chokolade, og nogle andre fødevarer. Tyramin, ligesom noradrenalin, kan hæve blodtrykket. Derfor kan forbruget af tyramin-holdige fødevarer af en patient under en MAO-hæmmer stof medføre forhøjede blodets indhold af tyramin og faretruende højt blodtryk. Desuden kan MAO interagere med over-the-counter kold og hoste medicin for at forårsage faretruende højt blodtryk. Grunden til dette er, at disse kolde og hoste medicin indeholder ofte lægemidler, som også kan øge blodtrykket. På grund af disse potentielt alvorlige lægemidler og fødevarer interaktioner, er MAO normalt kun ordineres efter andre behandlingsmuligheder har slået fejl.

Tricykliske antidepressiva (TCA) blev produceret i 50′erne til behandling af svær depression. De kaldes tricykliske antidepressiva, fordi deres kemiske struktur består af tre kemiske ringe. TCA arbejde hovedsageligt ved at øge niveauet af noradrenalin i hjernen synapser, selv om de også kan påvirke serotonin. Læger bruger ofte TCA til behandling af moderat til svær depression. Eksempler på tricykliske antidepressiva er amitriptylin (elavil), protriptyline (Vivactil), desipramin (Norpramin), nortriptylin (Aventyl, pamelor), trimipramine (Surmontil), og perfenazin (Triavil). TCA er sikkert og generelt veltolereret, når korrekt ordineret og administreret. Men hvis der træffes i over-dosis, TCA kan forårsage livstruende forstyrrelser i hjerterytmen. Nogle TCA kan også have en anti-kolinerge bivirkninger, der er grund til blokering af aktiviteten af de nerver, der er ansvarlige for kontrol af hjertefrekvensen, gut bevægelse, og spytproduktion. Således kan nogle TCA producere mundtørhed, forstoppelse og svimmelhed, når De står. Den svimmelhed resultater fra lavt blodtryk, der opstår, når De står op (ortostatisk hypotension). Antikolinerge bivirkninger kan også forværre snævervinklet glaukom, urinvejsobstruktion grund af benign prostata hypertrofi, og forårsage delirium hos ældre. TCA bør også undgås hos patienter med epileptiske anfald og en historie af slagtilfælde. Stimulanser såsom methylphenidat (Ritalin) eller dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine) anvendes primært til behandling af depression, der er resistente over for andre medikamenter. De stimulerende bruges oftest sammen med andre antidepressiva eller andre lægemidler, såsom humør stabilisatorer, antipsykotika, eller endda thyroideahormon. De er undertiden bruges alene, men sjældent. Grunden til at de som regel anvendes sammen med andre lægemidler mod depression er, at i modsætning til de andre lægemidler, at de inducerer en fart og en høj i både deprimeret og nondepressed mennesker. Som følge heraf er de stimulerende stærkt vanedannende lægemidler.

Tetracykliske antidepressiva er ens i aktion for at tricykliske antidepressiva, men deres struktur har fire kemiske ringe. Eksempler på tetracyclics omfatter maprotilin (Ludiomil) og mirtazapin (Remeron), et stof, der blev diskuteret ovenfor under dobbelt aktion antidepressiva.

Elektrokonvulsiv terapi (ECT)

I de seneste år, har teknik af ECT blevet meget forbedret. Behandlingen gives på hospitalet under bedøvelse, så folk fik ECT ikke føler smerte. De fleste patienter gennemgår seks til 10 behandlinger. En elektrisk strøm ledes gennem hjernen til at fremkalde en kontrolleret beslaglæggelse, som varer typisk 20 til 90 sekunder. Patienten er vågen i fem til 10 minutter. Den mest almindelige bivirkning er kortvarig hukommelsestab, som løser hurtigt. Efter den første behandlingsforløb, kan ECT kan sikkert gøres som en ambulant procedure. I ECT procedure, er en elektrisk strøm ledes gennem hjernen til at producere kontrollerede kramper (anfald). ECT er nyttig for visse patienter, især for dem der ikke kan tage eller ikke reagerer på antidepressiv medicin, har svær depression, eller er i en høj risiko for selvmord. ECT ofte er effektiv i tilfælde, hvor antidepressive lægemidler ikke giver tilstrækkelig lindring af symptomer. Denne procedure sandsynligvis virker, som tidligere nævnt, ved en massiv neurokemiske frigivelse i hjernen på grund af den kontrollerede beslaglæggelse. Meget effektiv, ECT lindrer depression inden for en til to uger efter begyndelsen behandlinger. Efter at have ECT, vil nogle patienter fortsat have vedligeholdelse ECT, mens andre vil vende tilbage til antidepressiv medicin.

Psykoterapier

Psykodynamisk terapi undertiden bruges til behandling af depression. De fokuserer på at løse patientens indre psykiske konflikter, der typisk menes at være rodfæstet i barndommen. Langsigtet psykodynamiske terapier er især vigtigt, hvis der synes at være en livslang historie og mønster af utilstrækkelig måder at håndtere (maladaptive overlevelsesmekanismer) i negativ eller selvstændige skadevoldende adfærd. Mange former for psykoterapi er faktisk anvendes til at hjælpe deprimerede personer, herunder nogle kortsigtede (10 til 20 uger) behandlinger. Talking behandlinger hjælpe patienterne med at få indsigt i deres problemer og løse dem ved hjælp af verbal give-and-take med terapeuten. Behavioral terapeuter hjælpe patienterne med at lære at opnå mere tilfredshed og belønning gennem deres egne handlinger. Disse terapeuter også hjælpe patienterne med at vænne sig af de adfærdsmæssige mønstre, der bidrager til deres depression. Interpersonelle og kognitiv / adfærdsterapi terapi er to af de kortsigtede psykoterapier, at forskningen har vist sig at være nyttigt for nogle former for depression. Interpersonel terapeuter fokus på patientens forstyrret personlige relationer, at både årsag og forværre depression. Kognitiv / adfærdsterapi terapeuter hjælpe patienterne med at ændre negative stilarter tænkning og adfærd, som ofte er forbundet med depression.

Hvad er den fælles depression behandling?

Der er mange sikre og effektive lægemidler, især SSRI-præparater, som kan være til stor hjælp i depression. Men, depression behandling ofte tager tid. Nogle gange vil lægen nødt til at prøve en lang række antidepressiva, før at finde den medicin eller en kombination af medicin, der er mest effektive for patienten. Nogle gange skal dosis øges til at være effektiv. Generelt vil den alvorlige depressive symptomer, især dem, der er tilbagevendende, kræver antidepressiv medicin (eller ECT under særlige betingelser) sammen med psykoterapi til det bedste resultat. Hvis en person lider en depressiv episode, han eller hun har en 50% chance for en anden episode. Hvis den enkelte lider to depressive episoder, chancen for en tredje episode på 75 til 80%. Hvis den person, der lider tre episoder, sandsynligheden for en fjerde episode er 90 til 95%. Derfor, efter en første depressiv episode, kan det give mening for patienten til gradvist at komme ud for medicin. Men efter en anden og helt sikkert efter en tredje episode, vil de fleste læger har en patient, der forbliver på et vedligeholdelses dosis af medicinen i en længere årrække, hvis ikke permanent. Ved valget af et antidepressivt, vil lægen tage hensyn til patientens alder, hans / hendes andre medicinske tilstande, og medicinering bivirkninger. Læger ofte bruge en af SSRI-præparater i første omgang på grund af deres lavere sværhedsgraden af bivirkninger sammenlignet med de andre klasser af antidepressiva. Bivirkninger af SSRI-medicin kan blive yderligere minimeres ved at starte dem ved lave doser og gradvist øge dosis for at opnå fuld terapeutisk effekt. For de patienter, som ikke reagerer efter tager et SSRI ved fulde doser i seks til otte uger, læger generelt skifte til et andet SSRI eller en anden klasse af antidepressiva. Til patienter med depression har undladt at reagere på fulde doser af en eller to SSRI-præparater, vil lægerne derefter forsøge medicin fra en anden klasse af antidepressiva. Nogle læger mener, at antidepressiva med dobbelt aktion (handling på både serotonin og noradrenalin), som duloxetin (Cymbalta), mirtazapin (Remeron), og venlafaxin (Effexor) kan være effektivt i behandling af patienter med svær depression, som er behandling resistente. Andre valgmuligheder omfatter bupropion (Wellbutrin, Wellbutrin SR, Wellbutrin XL, Zyban), der har indsats på dopamin (en anden neurotransmitter). Sommetider læger kan anvende en kombination af antidepressiva fra forskellige klasser. Også nye typer af antidepressiva er under konstant udvikling, og en af disse kan være den bedste for en bestemt patient. Patienterne ofte er fristet til at stoppe deres medicin for hurtigt. Det er vigtigt at tage medicinen, indtil lægen siger at stoppe, selv om patienten føler sig bedre på forhånd. Læger ofte vil fortsætte den antidepressive medicin i mindst seks til ni måneder. Visse medikamenter skal stoppes gradvist at give kroppen tid til at justere (se seponering af antidepressiva nedenfor). For personer med bipolar sygdom eller kronisk svær depression, kan medicin nødt til at blive en del af hverdagen i længere årrække for at undgå invaliderende symptomer. Hvis den deprimerede person, der tager mere end ét stof for depression eller medicin for ethvert andet medicinsk problem, bør alle i patientens læger blive gjort opmærksom på de andre recepter. Mange af disse medikamenter er fjernet fra kroppen (metaboliseres) i leveren. Det betyder, at flere stoffer kan interagere kompetitivt med leveren’s biokemiske clearingsystemer. Derfor kan de faktiske blodet af lægemidler være højere eller lavere end man kunne forvente af dosis. Disse oplysninger er især vigtigt, hvis patienten tager antikoagulantia (blodfortyndende), antikonvulsiva (beslaglæggelse medicinering), eller hjerte medicin, såsom digitalis (Crystodigin). Selv om flere lægemidler ikke nødvendigvis et problem, alle af patientens læger nødt til at være i tæt kontakt for at justere dosis i overensstemmelse hermed.

Antidepressiv medicin er ikke vanedannende, så der behøver ikke være bekymret over. Men, som det er tilfældet med enhver form for medicin ordineret i mere end et par dage, skal antidepressiva bør overvåges nøje for at sikre, at patienten bliver korrekt dosering. Den læge vil kontrollere dosering og dens effektivitet regelmæssigt. Hvis patienten tager MAO-hæmmere, visse alderen, gærede, eller syltede fødevarer skal undgås. Patienten bør få en komplet liste over forbudte fødevarer fra lægen og holde det til rådighed på alle tidspunkter. De andre typer af antidepressiva kræver ingen mad restriktioner. Husk, at nogle over-the-counter kolde og hostemedicin kan også give problemer, når de tages sammen med MAO-hæmmere.

Folk bør aldrig blande medicin af enhver art (ordineret, over-the-counter, eller lånes) uden at konsultere deres læge. Tandlægen eller en anden specialist, der ordinerer et lægemiddel, bør informeres om, at patienten tager antidepressiva. Nogle lægemidler, der er uskadelige, når det tages alene kan forårsage alvorlige og farlige bivirkninger, når det tages sammen med andre lægemidler. Nogle stoffer, såsom alkohol (også vin, øl og hård spiritus), nedsætte effektiviteten af antidepressiva og bør undgås.

Angstdæmpende medicin såsom Diazepam (Valium), Alprazolam (Xanax), og Lorazepam (Ativan) er ikke antidepressiva, men de er lejlighedsvis ordineret alene eller sammen med antidepressiv medicin i en kort periode med angst. De bør dog ikke tages alene for depressioner. Desuden bør den angstdæmpende medicin udfases, så snart de antidepressive og angstdæmpende virkninger af den antidepressive medicin begynder at arbejde, hvilket er normalt i fire til seks uger.

Endelig bør lægen skal høres om alle spørgsmål, om et stof eller problem, at patienten mener, er lægemidler-relateret.

Hvordan man kan stoppe med at tage antidepressiv medicin?

Antidepressiva bør nedtrappes gradvist og bør ikke brat afbrydes. Pludseligt stop for et antidepressivum hos nogle patienter kan forårsage afbrydelse syndrom. For eksempel at stoppe hurtigt en SSRI såsom paroxetin kan forårsage svimmelhed, kvalme, influenzalignende symptomer, body ømhed, angst, irritabilitet, træthed, og livagtige drømme. Disse symptomer opstår typisk inden for få dage pludselig ophør, og det kan vare en til to uger (op til 21 dage). Blandt SSRI-præparater, paroxetin og fluvoxamin forårsage mere udtalt seponeringssymptomer end fluoxetin, sertralin og citalopram. Nogle patienter oplever seponeringssymptomer trods af en gradvis aftrapning af SSRI. Pludselig ophør af venlafaxin kan medføre seponeringssymptomer svarende til SSRI-præparater. Pludseligt stop MAO-hæmmere kan medføre irritabilitet, agitation, og delirium. Tilsvarende brat at stoppe en TCA kan medføre uro, irritabilitet, og unormale hjerterytmer.

Hvordan kan jeg hjælpe en person, der er deprimeret?

Se som depression kan gøre den ramte person føler sig udmattede og hjælpeløs, han eller hun ønsker, og sandsynligvis har behov for hjælp fra andre. Familie og venner kan være ideelle hjælpere! Men folk der aldrig har haft en depression, kan ikke helt forstå dens virkning. Selv om utilsigtet, venner og kære, måske uden at vide det sige og gøre ting, som kan være skadeligt for den deprimerede person. Det kan hjælpe til at dele oplysningerne i denne artikel med dem, du mest på sinde, så de bedre kan forstå og hjælpe dig. Den vigtigste ting man kan gøre for den deprimerede person er at hjælpe ham eller hende at få en passende diagnose og behandling. Denne hjælp kan bestå i at tilskynde den enkelte til at bo med behandling, før symptomerne begynder at gå væk (som regel flere uger) eller til at søge anden behandling, hvis der ikke er sket en forbedring. Til tider kan det kræve, at en aftale, og som ledsager den deprimerede person til lægen. Det kan også betyde, overvåge, om den deprimerede person er ved at tage medicin. Altid indberetter en forværring af depression til patientens læge eller terapeut. Den næstvigtigste måde at hjælpe er at tilbyde følelsesmæssig støtte. Denne støtte omfatter forståelse, tålmodighed, hengivenhed, og opmuntring. Inddrage deprimeret person i samtale og lytte opmærksomt. Må ikke nedsættende udtryk for følelser, men gør opmærksom på realiteter og give håb. Må ikke ignorere bemærkninger om selvmord. Altid indberette dem til den deprimerede persons terapeut. Må ikke beskylde den deprimerede person af forfalskning sygdom eller af dovenskab. Forventer ikke ham eller hende “til snap out of it.” Til sidst, med behandling, de fleste deprimerede får det bedre. Opbevar det i tankerne. Desuden holder berolige deprimeret person, der, med tid og hjælp, han eller hun vil føle sig bedre. Opfordre deprimeret person til gåture, udflugter, og til film og andre aktiviteter. Forsigtigt insisterende, hvis din invitation er afvist. Tilskynde til deltagelse i aktiviteter, der engang gav glæde, som hobbyer, sport, eller religiøse eller kulturelle aktiviteter. Dog ikke skubbe den deprimerede person til at foretage for meget for hurtigt. Den deprimerede person har brug for selskab og omlægning, men alt for mange krav kan øge følelsen af fiasko.

Depression hjem retsmidler

Hvis du er deprimeret i 2 uger eller længere, skal du kontakte din læge, som kan tilbyde behandlingsmuligheder. Uanset om du har let eller svær depression, således egenomsorg skridt kan hjælpe:

• Få nok søvn.
• Følg en sund og nærende kost.
• Trænings regelmæssigt.
• Undgå alkohol, marihuana og andre rekreative stoffer.
• Få involveret i aktiviteter, der gør dig glad, selvom du ikke har lyst til det.
• Brug tid sammen med familie og venner.
• Prøv at tale med præster eller åndelige rådgivere, der kan bidrage til at give mening til smertefulde oplevelser.
• Overvej bøn, meditation, tai chi, eller biofeedback som måder at slappe af, eller trække på din indre styrke.
• Tilføj omega-3 fedtsyrer i din kost, som du kan få fra koldtvands fisk som tun, laks eller makrel.
• Tag folat (vitamin B9) i form af en multivitamin (fra 400 til 800 mikrogram).

Hvis din depression opstår i løbet af efteråret eller vinteren, kan du prøve lysbehandling ved hjælp af en særlig lampe, der efterligner solen. Mange mennesker forsøger en populær over-the-counter herb kaldet perikum. Nogle undersøgelser ikke tyder på, at dette naturmedicinen kan være nyttige for mild depression, men ikke moderat eller svær. Vær opmærksom på, at perikum har potentielle lægemiddelinteraktioner og bør ikke tages med lægeordineret antidepressiv medicin, p-piller, proteasehæmmere for HIV, theophyllin, warfarin, digoxin, reserpin, cyclosporin, eller loperamid. Tal med din læge, hvis du tænker på at prøve denne urt til mild depression. Hvis De har moderat til svær depression, den mest effektive behandling plan vil sandsynligvis være en kombination af rådgivning og medicin.

Forventninger

Sunde livsstilsvaner kan bidrage til at forebygge depression, eller mindsker chancerne for at det ikke sker igen. Disse vaner omfatter spise ordentligt, sover tilstrækkeligt, udøver regelmæssigt, lære at slappe af, og ikke drikke alkohol eller bruger lægemidler. Rådgivning kan hjælpe dig gennem en tid med sorg, stress eller lavt humør. Familieterapi kan være særlig vigtigt for unge, der føler blå. Hvis du føler dig socialt isolerede eller ensomme, prøv frivilligt arbejde eller blive involveret i gruppens aktiviteter.

Depression relaterede emner

Depression, depression test, depression symptomer, stress depression, stress, behandling depression, angst depression, angst, great depression, psykolog depression, depression medicin, symptomer på depression, hamilton depression, bipolar lidelse (Mania), Depression hos børn, depression hos ældre, Ferie Depression og Stress, Postpartum depression, posttraumatisk stress syndrom (PTSD), Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), symptomer på depression, teenagere Depression, Kvinder og depression, depression, mens Graviditet.

Depression indhold

• Læs mere om depression
• Depression medicin
• Er depression et stort fællesskab sundhedsproblem?
• Hvad forårsager depression
• Postpartum psykose
• Depression medicin anmeldelser
• Elektrokonvulsiv terapi (ECT)
• Psykoterapier
• Hvad er den fælles depression behandling?
• Hvordan man kan stoppe med at tage antidepressiv medicin?
• Hvordan kan jeg hjælpe en person, der er deprimeret?
• Depression hjem retsmidler
• Depression relaterede emner

Tilbage til toppen

NOT YOUR GARDEN VARIETY DEPRESSION.

In a nutshell: the present crisis consists in a whole succession of crises imbricated like Russian dolls within each other, when they are not entangled in even more complex ways. Many of these crises are much graver than in those in the 1930s, because they belong to the philosophical, or very deep psychological, realms .

An advantage we have, though, is that we know how bad it went in the 1930s, and that the application of more brainpower and solidarity would have allowed us to go through, then… except for the problem there was with the basic mentality of all too many Germans, who, at the time, thought that war was a panacea… of course no such thing would happen again now that the USA, the dominant military power (just as Germany used to be the dominant military power), is led by a Nobel Prize.

The USA could start pulling out of its dive by acknowledging that American institutions and American individuals are not to big to fail, and are not too big to fault, and acting accordingly. That would be a significant difference with the Germany that flew into WWII as a butterfly of hubris into the flame of civilizational collapse.

***

The present crisis is way worse than just a financial crisis, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s. Even during that one, the median income over a period of, say, twenty years, always went up. But this is not the case now: the average real median income in the last 20 years has been, at best, stagnant, in the USA.

On top of the financial crisis, there is now a serious economic crisis. It is caused by several factors: the so called "globalization", caused by average developing country workers doing the same work at a very small percentage of the salary of the developed country workers, is part of it; another part is the collapse of lending, the usual problem in a big financial crisis. Nationalizing the management of the banks would have insured lending to the real economy, but, instead, the Obama administration used nationalization instead as a gift to the entire oligarchy which caused the crisis, thus comforting them in the errors of their ways.

On top of the economic crisis, there is such a deep corruption crisis that it has become a cognitive crisis.

Indeed, instead of calling bankers, "banksters", as F. D. Roosevelt did, Obama embraced them, calling Jamie Dimon, head of JP Morgan "my friend" and professing his admiration. Then Obama went on to make derogatory, nationalistic, hubristic declarations on the Swedish bank sector, celebrating the superiority of the American one, thus demonstrating no conceptual awareness.

This all the more remarkable that the bankers Roosevelt accused to be “banksters” were not the prime causal agents of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Instead, the crisis of 2008 was entirely caused by the bankers. Thus the 2008 bankers deserve much more than the 1933 bankers the title of “banksters”. And what do we observe?

Obama’s chief of staff got more than a 16 million dollar bribe in two years, between stints in various public-private banks. Summers and Geithner were on formidable payrolls of various financial conspiracies for years (Congressman Ron Paul and Al. want the Fed to reveal what it has been plotting about, year in, year out, and with whom).

On top of the economic crisis there are energy crisis and a CO2 crisis, entangled with it, which put the biosphere at bay. The encroaching water crisis is part of the energy crisis (a lot of energy could allow to desalinate and transport).

Finally there is a scientific and value crisis. We need more rationality to get out of all the crises, but all what the "Nobel Peace Prize" can propose, is the eternal peace of killing all his enemies, real or imagined, plus untold numbers of completely innocent people.

And "Nobel Eternal Peace Prize" kills people with robots, in video games, at a distance, without even bothering with any semblance of due process. "We kill who we please, therefore we work for peace" seems the new modus operandi of the USA.

In other words, we are observing a moral crisis, the total collapse of the most basic legal and moral orders, breaking through various moral floors that even the Nazis did not dare break through, officially speaking.

Some will scoff, others will scream: the Nazis did worse, they will gloat, in their naivety. Sure, they did worse, at the end of their tether. The Nazis cycled through: they had to swallow their own poison, they collapsed with the holocaust they had organized for themselves. The Nazis went criminally insane, because they were losing the war, and they had been losing the war all along. Hitler confided this to Goebbels, as early as before attacking the USSR. The Fuhrer said to his propaganda minister, that they had already committed so many crimes, they were condemned to win, or die.

All along, the Nazis, even Hitler himself, pretty much knew that it was curtains for them after France, Great Britain and their enormous empires, Commonwealths and influences, declared war on September 3, 1939. Hence their weird, hyper criminal rage, as early as 1939 (they bombed flour mills in Poland before winter, so that the Poles would starve to death).

The Nazis were despaired all the way down their ranks. Even, as they looked at the height of their glory, vanquishing France in May 1940, Nazi engineers had to resort to suicide charges, carrying high explosives on their backs, Jihad style, to break through fortifications held by a second rate French reserve division (the Nazi armor, army and air force were concentrating on this point of the front, and they had to break through, or die, because there was no coming back through one narrow Ardennes road, while losing hundreds of planes, as only a fraction of the French and British air forces had been engaged yet).

So the Nazis were desperate, all along; they knew they would lose the war, and their hatred was the only thing that could grow without bounds. Thus, what the Nazis did secretly in their despair, the holocaust, is another matter entirely, from the further moral collapse of killing arbitrarily for all to see, with obvious immoral arrogance. The crucial point about the Nazi extermination: it was secret.

U.S. terminator robots manned by underlings of "Eternal Peace" guy is an official extermination program all too many Americans approve, whether they like it or not, as they morally collapse down the black hole that is engulfing their decaying civilization.

If one compares with the early 1930s, one sees that the problem then, was that enough Germans had understood nothing about the philosophical shortcomings and errors of their society. That guaranteed a disaster. For reasons I will not get into here, the basic fascist attitude of Germany led, or pushed the USSR, Italy, Spain, Japan, and many other countries into somewhat similar fascisms, either by direct impulse, or reaction (the later, in the case of Stalin).

Right now, it’s the USA and its long encouraged killer boy, Muslim fundamentalism, which don’t get it. The fact that they fight each other is no encouragement: Stalin justified his ways, killing millions of Soviet citizens, to his colleagues, by what he saw as the future, coming extermination war with Germany (as it turned out, Stalin was right, in more ways than one!) Stalin even allied himself with German fascism, for tactical advantage (although not as long as Qaeda was allied with Washington).

Some Americans may scoff, seeing no Soviet Union for them to invade, but that is to forget that the Bush’s government financed the Pakistani thermonuclear bombs, AND that it will not take many Islamist bombs exploding in the USA to incite the USA to verse into total fascism, even at home, as a remedy…

So there is a lot of work to do, just to conserve the world, and the peace we have now, and we are not heading that way, as the deference with whom the financiers and their perverse tools (derivatives) have been treated as "Too Big To FAULT".

Patrice Ayme.

http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/

***

P/S: it will not escape the astute that German real median income had not gone up for 20 years, as Hitler rolled in…

The Great Depression and the Current Recession (Part 1 of 9)

The Great Depression and the Current Recession (Part 2 of 9)

The Great Depression and the Current Recession (Part 3 of 9)

The Great Depression and the Current Recession (Part 4 of 9)

The Great Depression and the Current Recession (Part 5 of 9)

The Great Depression and the Current Recession (Part 6 of 9)

The Great Depression and the Current Recession (Part 7 of 9)

The Great Depression and the Current Recession (Part 8 of 9)

The Great Depression and the Current Recession (Part 9 of 9)

Background Articles and Videos

Robert Higgs
Senior Fellow in Political Economy

“…Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy for The Independent Institute and Editor of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, and the University of Economics, Prague. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow for the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation. 

He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Gary Schlarbaum Award for Lifetime Defense of Liberty, Thomas Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties, Lysander Spooner Award for Advancing the Literature of Liberty, Friedrich von Wieser Memorial Prize for Excellence in Economic Education, and Templeton Honor Rolls Award on Education in a Free Society. 

Dr. Higgs is the editor of The Independent Institute books Opposing the Crusader State, The Challenge of Liberty, Re-Thinking Green, Hazardous to Our Health? and Arms, Politics, and the Economy, plus the volume Emergence of the Modern Political Economy. 

Bob is also the author of Depression, War, and Cold War, available in April 2009 in a new paperback edition, and Neither Liberty Nor Safety, Politická ekonomie strachu (The Political Economy of Fear, in Czech), Resurgence of the Warfare State, Against Leviathan, The Transformation of the American Economy 1865-1914, Competition and Coercion, and Crisis and Leviathan. A contributor to numerous scholarly volumes, he is the author of more than 100 articles and reviews in academic journals.  …”

http://www.independent.org/aboutus/person_detail.asp?id=489

Robert Higgs

“…Robert Higgs (born 1 February 1944) is an American economist of the Austrian School and a libertarian anarchist. His writings in economics and economic history have most often focused on the causes, means, and effects of government growth.

He is a Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute (since September 1994), and is editor of Independent Review (since 1995).^[1] He is an adjunct faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute^[2] and is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.^[3] Higgs is also a contributor to LewRockwell.com.^[4]

Higgs has held teaching positions at University of Washington, Lafayette College, and Seattle University. He has also been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University. Higgs held a visiting professorship at the University of Economics, Prague in 2006,^[1] and has supervised dissertations in the Ph.D. program at Universidad Francisco Marroquín.^{[5] …”}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Higgs

Robert Higgs on Federal Reserve Transparency

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Banking Cartel’s Public Relations Campaign Continues:Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke On The Record

Do you remember Obama publicly attacking the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over it’s opposition to ObamaCare? Obama sure does.

Barack Obama is a petty, vindictive man.  And petty men do petty, vindictive things.  He is the kind of man who deceitfully and cynically claimed that he would uniquely transcend the political divide – only to be the most politically divisive figure we have ever seen in the White House.  And he is the kind of man who would cut off his nose to spite America’s face.

Case in point: the Obama job summit.

Obama gathered liberal economists (no conservatives allowed), pro-Democrat corporate CEOs, and union chiefs to tell him only what he wanted to hear.

But one business group was entirely shut out by Barack Obama, namely, the U.S. Chamber of commerce, which represents businesses that employ 115 million Americas (well more than half of the total U.S. work force).  And, according to USCoC executive vice president of government affairs Bruce Josten, “Not only were we not invited, but not a single business organization HQd in Washington DC was invited.”

Small businesses create three out of every four jobs in America.  Not that Obama gives a damn.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) – which also crossed Obama on ObamaCare – was also deliberately excluded.

Just in case anybody actually believed the White House or lamestream media propaganda that Obama’s “job summit” had anything to do with actually creating jobs.

An incredibly petty and vindictive president decided to punish the Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business for refusing to help him small business destroy jobs.   And in doing so, he is punishing millions of American workers.

Just imagine a job summit which is openly hostile to the actual creators of jobs.  Just imagine that job summit being depicted as being for the purpose of informing the president of all of the job-creating possibilities, when no one who disagreed with the president’s leftist views was even allowed to attend.

After agreeing with Judge Andrew Napolitano’s point that America is not going to have any meaningful job creation as long as the Obama administration continues recklessly printing, borrowing and spending trillions of dollars even as it utterly abandoning free market principles, Josten went on to say:

We need to get some certainty back in the American economy.  And right now you have a business community that doesn’t know what their tax liabilities are going to be a year from now; have no idea what their health care costs are going to be next year; have no idea what their energy costs are going to be next year; and have no idea what kind of credit is going to be available next year.  So this ‘big bang theory’ of using the crisis if you will – as the administration said some time ago – to move and overhaul entire swaths of the American economy, at this point is fueling uncertainty in the business community – and I would suggest to your listeners – in the American public.  And that’s a prescription to defer making any decisions.

And let’s not forget other abominations to business such as the union-agenda-imposing “card check” that would massively add to businesses’ costs if passed.

In other words, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM, OBAMA.

For all of Obama’s demagoguing and demonizing the Bush administration, this is Barack Obama’s economy (and any real leader would have long-since quit trying to blame his predecessor and started taking responsibility for what is happening in the country during his watch anyway).  It is HIS policies that have prevented the economy from recovering.  It is HIS policies that are killing jobs by creating paralyzing fear and uncertainty.

According to Jesus (see Luke 14:28), any wise man sits down and counts his costs before beginning a project.  But how can a business man do so in the climate of fear that Obama has created?

Statistically, this recession should have ended a while back, as the economy attained equilibrium and recovered on its own.  The average length of a recession is 11 months.  It’s only when elitist statist bureaucrats start screwing around with all the economic levers because they think they know better than the free market system that we get long-term economic recessions and depressions.

Obama “turned fearmongering into an art form” while he force-fed his massive pork-laden stimulus onto the nation:

As he tells it, today’s economy is the worst since the Great Depression. Without his Recovery and Reinvestment Act, he says, the economy will fall back into that abyss and may never recover.

He promised us that if his stimulus passed, he would be able to keep unemployment under 8%.  Now it’s in double digits.  The rate dropped 2/10ths of a percent this month from last, primarily due to the fact that more people are simply giving up even bothering to look for jobs:

The unemployment rate also dropped because fewer people are looking for work. The size of the labor force, which includes the employed and those actively searching for jobs, fell by nearly 100,000, the third straight decline. That indicates more of the unemployed are giving up on looking for work.

The participation rate, or the percentage of the population employed or looking for work, fell to 65 percent, the lowest since the recession began.  Once laid-off people stop hunting for jobs, they are no longer counted in the unemployment rate.

The bait-and-switch and shell games being played by the mainstream media and the White House propagandists continues at Titanic-about-to-plough-into-an-iceberg pace.  Bad economic news that is not as bad as it could have been is projected as good news, while seriously bad news is buried in the 22nd paragraph of an optimistically-entitled and positively-spun article.

What we have is a numbers game in which actual unemployment could literally soar, even as the “official” unemployment rate actually decreases.

But you can bet your boots that actual unemployment will continue to go up.

Obama and his propagandists have since incessantly argued that they “underestimated” how bad the economy that “Bush left them” actually was.  That’s how they explain away their pathetic failure to do what they promised they could do if the got their porkulus.  But that argument utterly fails because Obama repeatedly compared it to the Great Depression.  In fact, Paul Volcker, the Chair of Obama’s handpicked President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, back on February 20th actually told us the situation “may be WORSE than the Great Depression.”

So I’ll leave it to you to figure out how the Obama administration could have argued on the one hand that the economy was the worst since, or even worse than, the Great Depression on the one hand, and then turned around on the other hand and said that they didn’t realize how bad the economy actually was.  Because if you know anything at all about the terrible conditions of the Great Depression, you know that our present economic situation has never been even close to being as bad as the Great Depression.

But don’t worry.  If you feel left out because you haven’t been able to experience the Great Depression, Obama’s policies are making sure you’ll be able to enjoy a Great Depression of your own soon.

Now we know this was just liberals using a “crisis” as an “opportunity.” As Obama’s Chief of Staff put it:

EMANUEL: You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before. This is an opportunity.

The point is that this unemployment “crisis” is just another “opportunity” for Barry Obama to “fundamentally transform America” and pay off his pro-liberal corporate and union special interests doing it.

Obama’s decision to deliberately snub the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business in a “job summit” was either pathologically petty, idiotically incompetent, or both.  And the American people are going to suffer as a result.

If anybody should have been snubbed from attending the jobs summit, Barry Hussein, it was YOU.

As for the three-quarters of American workers who get their jobs from small businesses, well, screw you people.  That’s the “change” you get.

$1 million to keep one US soldier in Afghanistan for one year

NY Times
November 14, 2009

Read Full Article Here

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Cover, 1st Edition, 1936

In Robert Frost’s 1936 volume, A Further Range, appears a section archly titled “Ten Mills.” It is a suite of ten short poems—some of them epigrams of a sort—originally published in the April 1936 issue of Poetry magazine. A mill, of course, is one-tenth of a cent (a sense fallen now almost entirely out of use). Which is to say, in this little suite of very brief, and very mischievous, poems, Frost is putting not his proverbial “two-cents” in, but merely one. The last of the “ten mills” is the following poem, which has always struck as by far the most interesting among them. In fact, at times I find it baffling. A bit of lore lies behind the poem, chiefly having to do with its title. But first, the poem itself, which is done up curtly in couplets, each line of which bears four accents (the ratio of accent to syllable is not regular):

“In Divés Dive”

It is late at night and still I am losing,
But still I am steady and unaccusing.

As along as the Declaration guards
My right to be equal in number of cards,

It is nothing to me who runs the dive.
Let’s have a look at another five.

And now for the lore. In the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible, Luke 16:19-31, we read the following: (N.B. I highlight the most relevant passage in red bold type, and the rest in color-coded type alone, to point up the correspondences between this Latin, of which I am myself no reader, and the English that follows it): “homo quidam erat dives et induebatur purpura et bysso et epulabatur cotidie splendideet erat quidam mendicus nomine Lazarusqui iacebat ad ianuam eius ulceribus plenus cupiens saturari de micis quae cadebant de mensa divitis sed et canes veniebant et lingebant ulcera eius factum est autem ut moreretur mendicus et portaretur ab angelis in sinum Abrahae mortuus est autem et dives et sepultus est in inferno elevans oculos suos cum esset in tormentis videbat Abraham a longe et Lazarum in sinu eius et ipse clamans dixit pater Abraham miserere mei et mitte Lazarum ut intinguat extremum digiti sui in aqua ut refrigeret linguam meam quia crucior in hac flamma et dixit illi Abraham fili recordare quia recepisti bona in vita tua et Lazarus similiter mala nunc autem hic consolatur tu vero cruciaris et in his omnibus inter nos et vos chasma magnum firmatum est ut hii qui volunt hinc transire ad vos non possint neque inde huc transmeare et ait rogo ergo te pater ut mittas eum in domum patris mei habeo enim quinque fratres ut testetur illis ne et ipsi veniant in locum hunc tormentorum et ait illi Abraham habent Mosen et prophetas audiant illos at ille dixit non pater Abraham sed si quis ex mortuis ierit ad eos paenitentiam agent ait autem illi si Mosen et prophetas non audiunt neque si quis ex mortuis resurrexerit credent.” The King James Bible renders this text as follows (again, the relevant phrases are highlighted as above):

Painting depicting the parable of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus, done by Meister des Codex Aureus Epternacensis (ca. 1035-1040)

“There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; and in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence. Then he [i.e., Divés] said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him [i.e., Lazarus] to my father’s house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”

1823 facsimile of the engrossed copy of the "Declaration."

In short, by tradition, “Divés” is the name given to “that certain rich man” [homo quidam erat dives] in most commentaries on the parable of the beggar Lazarus; and it is he who runs the “dive” of Frost’s poem. Frost places us, then, in a cheap gambling dive, in the middle of the Great Depression, run by a corrupt rich man bound for Hell. And Frost’s “steady and unaccusing” speaker, the man doing all the “losing,” somehow takes heart from the fact that, so long as “the Declaration guards [his] right to be equal in number of cards,” it is “nothing to [him] who runs the dive.” All he wants is “a look at another five”—five cards, that is, as in a “deal.” The game in question is obviously poker. And the poem is just as obviously allegorical. The “house rules” in this “dive” are, it appears, those of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The general metaphor underlying the poem could not be any clearer:

America is a cheap gambling dive run by corrupt and wealthy men; to be in America is to be in Divés dive.

Langston Hughes, in the 1930s, photograph by Nickolas Muray.

But what we are to make of this metaphor, how we are to take it? That’s no easy question to answer. Consider a thought experiment, along these lines: Read the poem not as written by Robert Frost, but as written instead, say, by Langston Hughes, in his fellow-traveling Communist days in the 1930s. Hughes might well have written such a poem (and as Frost himself was told in conversation with the poet Sterling Brown, “Divés,” and the parable in which he figures, was a theme touched on in Negro Spirituals, for reasons perfectly obvious). We might then conclude: Well, obviously, Hughes is saying what any poet on the far left during the ’30s might have said: The Declaration, and every other guarantee of ‘equal protection under the law,’ are nothing but ideological shams. The nation had been, was, and always will be—short of a second revolution—one run by, and in the interests of, the wealthy and the corrupt. And anyone who thinks otherwise, as the “unaccusing” gambler in the poem apparently does, is a naïve fool. For who but a fool would ever go into a “dive” run by the likes of Divés and lay a single dollar on the table? Clearly this poem is a clever and wicked satire not merely of America, but of anyone who expected, say, that the “New Deal” (“let’s have a look at another five!”) was anything other than a measure meant to shore up capitalism, by curbing its excesses, so as to save it from committing suicide.

What’s the use of this thought experiment? To illustrate, among other things, how thoroughly we let knowledge about the author of a poem govern our reading of it—Roland Barthes & Michel Foucault notwithstanding. Most middling readers of Frost simply take it for granted that he couldn’t possibly hold any such views as those just entertained in our little experimental attribution of the poem to (say) Langston Hughes. Surely, they think, there must be something else afoot. Surely no man is altogether a fool to place his faith in the guarantees of the Declaration and the Constitution (with, say, its 14th amendment, making good, at least on paper, Jefferson’s great promise of “equality”). And though it be true that the parable of Lazarus figured in the sorrow songs of the slaves, we find it in a number of English ballads dating back centuries, and from the other side of the Atlantic altogether. Richard Crashaw wrote two quatrains on the theme in his Steps to the Temple. It is a veritable commonplace (though, admittedly, Frost gives it specifically American coordinates).

Title page of the first edition (1646).

“Upon Lazarus’ s tears.”
Rich Lazarus! richer in those gems, thy tears,
Than Dives in the robes he wears:
He scorns them now, but O! they’ll suit full well.
With th’ purple he must wear in Hell.

“Dives asks a drop. — Luke xvi. 24.”
A drop, one drop, how sweetly one fair drop
Would tremble on my pearl-tipp’d finger’s top!
My wealth is gone; O! go it where it will,
Spare this one jewel; I’ll be Dives still.

But let’s take ourselves for something more than your middling reader of Frost. And then let’s see what we make of the poem. It raises a number of questions, of course: To what extent is personal prosperity a “gamble” in a nation that considers itself a “democracy”? To what extent should prosperity be a gamble in such a nation? In reading “In Divés Dive,” we do well to bear in mind what Frost says in his 1935 Introduction to E.A. Robinson’s King Jasper:

“Yester­day in conversation, I was using ‘The Mill.’ Robinson could make lyric talk like drama. What imagination for speech in ‘John Gorham‘! He is at his height between quotation marks.

Portrait of Edwin Arlington Robinson by Lilla Cabot Perry, 1916.

The miller’s wife had waited long.
The tea was cold, the fire was dead.
And there might yet be nothing wrong
In how he went and what he said.
‘There are no millers any more,’
Was all that she had heard him say.

‘There are no millers any more.’ It might be an edict of the New Deal against processors (as we now dignify them). But no, it is of wider application. It is a sinister jest at the expense of all investors of life or capital. The market shifts and leaves them with a car-barn full of dead trolley cars. At twenty I commit myself to a life of re­ligion. Now, if religion should go out of fashion in twenty-five years, there would I be, forty-five years old, unfitted for any­thing else and too old to learn anything else. It seems immoral to have to bet on such high things as lives of art, business, or the church. But in effect, we have no alternative. None but an all-­wise and all-powerful government could take the responsibility of keeping us out of gambling or of insuring us against loss once we were in.”

Really? This is cold comfort, if we take Frost at his word. I’m not all in for it. There’s more than a little overstatement in the phrasing here: “None but an all-­wise and all-powerful government could take the responsibility….” Well, ought a partly-wise and moderately powerful government take due responsibility for ameliorating the larger risks of living and working in a decidedly capitalist economy? And isn’t that what FDR had attempted to do with such institutions as the FDIC an the SEC?

And yet, with “In Divés Dive,” nuances and complexities remain. All manner of queries and provocations hang about it, as if to make good sport of (or with) the reader. Does Jefferson’s old adage have anything to do with “outcomes,” so to speak? Does it have more to do with equality in opportunity than with equality in results? Does it have anything at all to do with “equality” in the “results” of (say) our several hundred million American “gambles” in our several hundred million American lives? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. And for that matter, are “New Deal” policies—don’t forget that terminal line: “Let’s have a look at another five”;—are New Deal policies that aim at marginalizing personal risk warranted by either the Declaration or the Constitution, no matter what value they may have in themselves? And does it even matter whether or not these efforts to marginalize risk, and to protect the weak from the worst abuses of the Capital, have a “constitutional” warrant, or some other sort of authority—say, vested in Jefferson’s immortal words? Indeed it might not matter. Hence our ongoing debate, even unto the autumn of 2009.

And still harder questions remain. Does Frost “parody” or “cite” the view taken of America in the poem before us here—that is to say, the Langstonian view of it I took in my thought experiment—and then step aside, as if to say: “I’m not giving it a Yea or a Nay—don’t try to fix me there.” Or, could the poem be a kind of playful enigma, tossed out to Frost’s leftist critics—the ones who’d been after him ever since 1928—as if to say: “Here. Deal with this, if you’re so sure you’ve got me pegged as some sort of reactionary.” And must we reach a conclusion as to whether or not Frost expects his readers, of whatever stripe, to regard his “unaccusing” American “gambler,” firm in his faith in the Declaration, as a damn fool? I can hardly read the poem otherwise myself (though I can imagine a reader who might shake his head at me for doing so). For who but an idiot would keep up the gamble “late into the night” in a joint identified for us as “Divés dive”? How much patience, in the face of how much loss, is too much patience in the face of too much loss? Everybody knows that the “House Always Wins” with its credit default swaps—that the “House” always gets its “bailouts,” even as “gamblers” in sub-prime mortgages lose their three-bedroom bungalows on the south side of Chicago, or their ranch-houses in Florida.

What to say by way of conclusion? That Frost, yet again, is “rumpling our brains,” as he liked to put it. He’s messing with us. And I append here two little-known observations Frost made on the subject of capitalism, of which he was well-prepared to be wary. Both are printed in The Collected Prose of Robert Frost (Harvard, 2007). The first is taken from Lawrance Thompson’s otherwise unpublished “Notes on Conversations with Robert Frost.” In it you will find this account of a 21 February 1940 conversation with Frost: “In his ideas on politics he thinks of civilization as giving us a right to indulge our individualities, our eccentricities, even our perversions. A government is like a great breathing monster—giving out greater freedom, liberty, license—and then at times taking it in. A communal state is a taking in. A democracy is a letting out. But even a democracy, in time of war, calls all its liberties in, temporarily, for the communal good. Capital in Wall Street indulges its liberties to the extent of perversion and then is checked.” The second observation dates from a visit Frost made to Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1954, to attend the World Congress of Writers. Frost delivered the following remarks in English. They were subsequently translated into Portuguese for publication in the official proceedings of the Congress, Congresso International de Escritores e Encontros Inteletuais (Sau Paulo, 1957). Robert Johnson of the University of Massachusetts then translated them back into English at the request of G. Stanley Koehler of the Department of English at Amherst. The text of Johnson’s translation is held both at Amherst College and at the Jones Library, Amherst. I reprint it here with a few emendations suggested by Barbara Joels of Rutgers University, who (years ago, now) kindly agreed to check-read Johnson’s translation against the original Portuguese. Johnson, in passing his translation along to Koehler, adds in passing that Frost’s remarks “must have left quite a few delegates with mouths ajar.” One can readily see why. Following is the better part of Frost’s speech at the Congress, as refracted through Portuguese and back into English: “Our basic principle—that of Americans I mean—is somewhat complex. But note: John Adams was the man who decided upon our separation from the Old World, Europe. He imagined, for example, that there scarcely existed between us a degree of kinship. Afterward, Tom Paine noted that the war was not so much a war of separation but rather one for liberty and the inspiration of the French Revolution. Now, that man almost had his head chopped off, having escaped because he fled from his prison thanks to a fortunate accident. But our world did not revolt struggling for equality; scarcely anything was done in equality’s name. The great realization, the real consequence of the revolution was the separation, and I should be greatly troubled if we remained separate from Europe—the Old World—without demonstrating some originality to the world. Because I always want to have the hope and satisfaction of knowing that we possess something new and fresh to contribute to the future of humanity. The enthusiasm for equality, for the distribution of land, wealth, and finally the enthusiasm for humanity—that enthusiasm disappeared from our earth, and I can see nothing through the Iron Curtain. The truth of the matter is that everything disappeared with the disappearance of Tom Paine. Another point that we must observe is the following. We must avoid a great danger that threatens us: big capitalism that never remembers to hold back, to restrict itself. It is necessary that big capitalism remain constantly under observation, principally by other countries. The saving grace is that our army never adhered to big capitalism, for, if this were to happen, it would be our end.”

A Pillsbury Mill above St. Anthony Falls, Minneapolis. These were the enterprises that ensured that "there were no millers anymore."

N.B. Frost quotes only a small part of “The Mill” in his Introduction to Robinson’s King Jasper. But the poem as a whole is well worth reprinting here, as a bitter envoy. “The Mill” records two suicides, undertaken out of despair created by the “great progress” of industrial capitalism in the late 19th century—owing, indeed, to what would come to be represented by the Pillsbury Doughboy.

“The Mill” (Edwin Arlington Robinson)
The miller’s wife had waited long,
The tea was cold, the fire was dead;
And there might yet be nothing wrong
In how he went and what he said:
“There are no millers any more,”
Was all that she had heard him say;
And he had lingered at the door
So long that it seemed yesterday.

The Pillsbury Doughboy

Sick with a fear that had no form
She knew that she was there at last;
And in the mill there was a warm
And mealy fragrance of the past.
What else there was would only seem
To say again what he had meant;
And what was hanging from a beam
Would not have heeded where she went.

And if she thought it followed her,
She may have reasoned in the dark
That one way of the few there were
Would hide her and would leave no mark:
Black water, smooth above the weir
Like starry velvet in the night,
Though ruffled once, would soon appear
The same as ever to the sight.

by Chidem Kurdas

Today President Obama is holding a jobs summit, with the professed goal of soliciting ideas to encourage businesses to hire. Short-term tax credits for employers are among the measures mentioned.

Yesterday here on ThinkMarkets Mario Rizzo pointed to the distorting impact of such proposals and cited Gary Becker’s argument that cutting income taxes is a better way to stimulate employment.  There is another type of distortion – related to the highly informative back and forth by Jerry O’Driscoll and Roger Koppl on Mario’s post – that should be spelled out. Even as the economy recovers, government-created uncertainty is going to discourage hiring.

Payroll taxes account for a significant chunk of the cost of labor. Roger suggested a temporary reduction in payroll taxes, or FICA. Surely these taxes are a major drag on employment. But as Jerry argued, a temporary tax cut won’t create permanent jobs.

Most hiring is forward looking. Employers think not only of the cost right now but future costs. Not only will future raises in payroll taxes dwarf any temporary tax credit, even worse, their full extent is unknown. Consider that payroll taxes include the Medicare tax, which will likely surge in the not-too-distant future, given the way Medicare spending is rising.

Meanwhile, in their wisdom Congress and the administration are concocting an employer medical insurance mandate that promises to be a sinkhole for money, even if premiums don’t rise any faster than they’re already rising, as the Congressional Budget Office claims will be the case.

The bottom line is that somebody will have to pay for the increased use of medical services; taxes on “Cadillac” health plans won’t be nearly enough, especially if people move out of those plans, as the Congressional Budget Office also predicts.

Who is going to pay how much remains obscure, so the future cost of labor is uncertain. Maybe there are employers who will hire now to get a short-term little tax credit and take on unknown but potentially gigantic liabilities imposed by the government in the future. However, there can’t be a large number of employers who are that dumb and remain in business.

Payroll taxes and mandates are just one type of barrier. Richard Epstein recently wrote about the many laws and regulations that impede the creation of jobs.

But the handicaps imposed on private hiring are not a problem for proponents of expanding the government sector. Weak private employment is used to justify a 1930s-style public works program—which, as Jerry reminded us, in fact did not work. However, the $400 billion-plus package now proposed by the left-liberal Economic Policy Institute includes a $40 billion-a-year public employment program that received Paul Krugman’s approval.

Unemployment really is a nasty social ill and the government should indeed tackle it—by putting its own house in order. It should restrain Medicare spending, permanently  reduce payroll taxes and refrain from employer mandates. Of course, that’s all been said before, but given that the Obama administration and this Congress look to go in the wrong direction, it needs to be repeated.

The jobs summit is meant to persuade people that the government is doing what it can to combat the joblessness caused by the private economy. We need to be clear that the government itself is tamping down big time on private hiring— even as officials and politicians protest otherwise loudly and often. This shows in the medical entitlement bill, laden with mandates and regulations that will discourage hiring for the foreseeable future.

True, that won’t bother someone who wants to expand public and quasi-public jobs at the expense of private ones. The only constraint on politicians is that not all the people will be fooled by various dog-and-pony shows and will assign the blame where it belongs. One hopes.

The following chart comes from Dan Norcini at jsmineset.com.  It illustrates the fact that gold has been the “go to” safe haven of late and that those holding dollars/bonds are losing versus those holding gold:

Gold just crossed $1,223 and Silver is at $19.40…

Here is what could be causing it:

1.  Insiders know something big is about to happen

2. The flight from the dollar is accelerating to the point of an impending currency crisis

3. Momentum players have jumped into the game to ride the wave and squeeze the shorts

I think it’s #3 but I wouldn’t discount the first two.

Maybe one will agree or maybe one won’t agree with the commentary, but its certainly worth a read.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-leading-us-right-to-great-depression-2-2009-12-01?pagenumber=1

During the Great Depression protectionism ruled. Tariffs were enacted and while they did not cause the collapse of world trade seen above they blocked its revival, according to Barry Eichengreen.

The same might happen today, but instead of tariffs devaluations are the instrument of choice. Here is the FT:

Vietnam’s decision to devalue its currency by 5 per cent last week to protect itself from undervaluation of the Chinese renminbi, and the worried response from Thailand and other Asian countries, suggests the move towards global trade conflict may already be unstoppable. As one group of countries seeks to gain or maintain trade advantage by manipulating their currencies, the historical precedent suggests that countries that are not able to devalue will respond with trade protection, especially tariffs and other barriers, and global trade will suffer.

This is bad news for those hoping that an export-led recovery would take place. This is especially bad news for Germany.

Nation-Building in Afghanistan Instead of at Home Will Produce New ‘Misery Index’

Congressional Democrats Beware: Unemployment at Home + Casualties Abroad = Defeat at the Polls in 2010

By Tom Andrews Dec. 3, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

President Obama’s decision to nation-build in Afghanistan in the midst of the worst economic recession since the Great Depression is likely to produce a new Misery Index for Americans: The escalating numbers of dead and wounded American soldiers in Afghanistan PLUS the likely high level of unemployed Americans at home. For Congressional Democrats, the Misery Index could add up to big trouble at the polls in November 2010.

Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan coined the term “misery index” as a very effective way to focus attention on the Carter administration’s double barrel headache in 1980: rising unemployment and inflation. President Obama’s decision to double down on a failing Afghanistan strategy by ordering an immediate military escalation is likely to present Democratic Congressional candidates with a Misery Index of their own in 2010.

President Obama wants to rush the troops that General McCrystal has requested for Afghanistan as soon as possible so that they can be in place for the so-called spring “fighting season”. The significantly larger military footprint of foreign forces will, inevitably, swell the ranks of Taliban fighters who have been successfully using the presence of these forces as their most potent recruitment weapon. The result is not hard to predict: a significant spike in US casualties in Afghanistan in the summer and fall of 2010 at precisely the time that Members of Congress are facing voters in the 2010 elections…..
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/03-

See http://www.fdic.gov/about/learn/learning/when/2000s.html.