Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.


Dan Drezner is feeling very gloomy tonight:

The start of the Great Depression is commonly assumed to be the October 1929 stock market crash in the United States. It didn’t really become the Great Depression, however, until 1931, when Austria’s Creditanstalt bank desperately needed injections of capital. Essentially, neither France nor England were willing to help unless Germany honored its reparations payments, and the United States refused to help unless France and the UK repaid it’s World War One debts. Neither of these demands was terribly reasonable, and the result was a wave of bank failures that spread across Europe and the United States.

The particulars of the current sovereign debt crisis are somewhat different from Creditanstalt, and yet it’s fascinating how smart people keep referring back to that ignoble moment. The big commonality is that while governments might recognize the virtues of a coordinated response to big crises, they are sufficiently constrained by domestic discontent to not do all that much.

So… is this 1931 all over again?

Read the rest to see why Dan thinks it might be. My own take is that it’s probably not, partly because 1931 already happened and we’ve learned at least a little something since then. As senseless as a lot of our recent political behavior has been, so far national governments have been willing to respond to prevent imminent catastrophes from getting out of hand. It might not happen until the last second, but in the end, they finally do the right thing — or at least enough of the right thing to keep things puttering along.

What national governments haven’t shown the will to do is address issues that are slightly less than catastrophic. As a result, our recovery is going to be much slower than it needs to be, and it might even tip into a second recession. More than likely we’ll avoid 1931, but I’m increasingly unsure we’ll avoid 1981.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate