I really don't understand economics in a functional way. I am terrible with my OWN money - to say nothing of student loans. But there have been a lot of historical parallels generally in the US right now - in terms of the election (some particularly nasty ones in the 1840s and 1860 of course), and now economics too. I'm reading for my classes a really great book in the Oxford History of the United States series (can't recommend all five volumes enough) called Freedom from Fear by David Kennedy. And Kennedy makes the important separation of the Crash from the Depression. But the amount of failures in banking and finance now taking place present some really worrying parallels. A lot of the crisis after the Crash, Kennedy notes, was from runs on banks, and in essence, a total loss of confidence. Now the Market dropping 500 points today doesn't have an immediate impact on me. And I'm not suggesting that the economy is on the verge of utter collapse, as it did in 1929. But to view the Great Depression as a process does offer some troubling potential paths of our economy now.
Anyway, my brain hurts from 3 lectures today, and now I have another one to write on the settlement of the American South in the 17th century. So pardon the incoherence.
