From October 29th, 1929 to April 4th, 2025: Are We Repeating the Past?

On Tuesday October 29th, 1929, commonly called Black Tuesday, the stock market tumbled, and continued to tumble. President Hoover said, just a glitch, markets go up and down, the “Roaring Twenties” will roar back. As the market continued to slide Hoover saw sharply increasing tariffs as a remedy, reversing the sliding economy the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, named after the congressional sponsors, had the opposite impact. Unemployment raced upwards and businesses failed. 

Since the Revolutionary War the government has issued promissory notes, called bonuses, to veterans, promising land or cash at a future date. The World War 1 veterans were promised a lump sum based on a number of criteria payable in 1945. With unemployment endemic, unemployed veterans set up a tent city asking for early payment of the “bonus.”   DC police tried to dismantle the tent encampment, gunfire ensued, Hoover sent in the Army, and, with tanks, destroyed the tent city, the nation sympathized with the Bonus Army.

Sound a little familiar?

In November 1932 FDR was overwhelmingly elected beginning the New Deal, today referred to as Keynesian Economics, the direct role of the government in addressing substantive issues.

The central belief of Keynesian economics is that government intervention can stabilize the economy.

Based on his theory, Keynes advocated for increased government expenditures and lower taxes to stimulate demand and pull the global economy out of the Depression.

Subsequently, Keynesian economics was used to refer to the concept that optimal economic performance could be achieved—and economic slumps could be prevented—by influencing aggregate demand through economic intervention by the government.

 The current president, accepting the  cultish views of Elon Musk’s grandfather, is attempting to reverse economic policy that has brought prosperity to the  nation since the Great Depression.

Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize Winning Economist asks “Will Malignant Careless Stupidity Destroy the Economy” https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/will-careless-stupidity-kill-the
Jill LaPore, one of our most respected historians unearths the background of Elon Musk, Opinion | The Rise and Fall of Elon Musk – The New York Times

[LaPore] made a series for the BBC in which she located the origins of Mr. Musk’s strange sense of destiny in science fiction, some of it a century old. This year, revising the series, I was again struck by how little of what Mr. Musk proposes is new and by how many of his ideas about politics, governance and economics resemble those championed by his grandfather Joshua Haldeman, a cowboy, chiropractor, conspiracy theorist and amateur aviator known as the Flying Haldeman. Mr. Musk’s grandfather was also a flamboyant leader of the political movement known as technocracy.

Leading technocrats proposed replacing democratically elected officials and civil servants — indeed, all of government — with an army of scientists and engineers under what they called a technate. Some also wanted to annex Canada and Mexico …

Are we headed into another Great Depression, or, the rise of Mussolini-like fascism, or both?   

Across the nation hundreds of thousands marched to urge the rejection of the Trump-Musk destruction of our democracy.

If the stock market continues to dive and the tariffs begin to lead the nation into a recession or worse I would expect Trump to issue an Executive Order, reprinting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion – Wikipedia

In Albany the budget is late, the legislature is passing “extenders” while the governor and the legislative leaders haggle over non-budgetary items to add to the budget, i.e., a bell to bell prohibition of cell phone use in schools across the state, easing the prosecution’s requirement to make “discovery” available in criminal trials.  Hanging over the entire budget process is the big, really big question, will the soon to be passed federal budget reduce federal dollars to the state (the answer is YES), and by how much?  In the last budget federal dollars made up 91 billion in a 237 billion state budget, Hochul has proposed a 253 billion for the 25-26 fiscal year.  How much less will the state receive and how can they raise the required added revenue without reducing services? or, can they simply reduce services, fewer dollars for Medicaid, Education, etc.?

The NYC budget is due by the end of June and the negotiators, the current Mayor and Speaker of the City Council are both mayoral candidates, and the leading mayoral candidate is Andrew Cuomo. The new Mayor and the new Speaker will not take office until January 1, 2026, and Mayor Adams and probably candidate Cuomo will be battling until the November General Election. Who will be the “victims”? Will Adams become a clone of Trump? Can Cuomo fight over the attacks?

Are the State and the City hanging at the edge of a fiscal precipice? 

And, the ballots in the UFT election are in the mail May 1.

The opposition caucuses are oblivious to the tornado funnels bearing down on the city.   Rather than one union, together, unified, fighting Trump/Musk and whomever are our enemies the opposition caucuses continue to see “preparing for a strike” as a path forward; it is a path off the end of the cliff.  Suicide is not a viable strategy.

Labor together, the American Federation of Teachers across the nation, the United Federation of Teachers in New York City, union leaders, btw, all in the Progressive (Unity) Caucus, fighting together.  

We need tough experienced leaders to lead us, check the Unity box on your ballot.