THE BLOG of John Gelles
September 15, 2008
BLACK MONDAY
WHITE FUTURE Greenspan called it a once in a century day. Black Monday, 15 September 2008. The Dow Jones average dropped 500 points or 5% over fear of coming bankruptcies and diminished credit availability of a magnitude likely to cause a prolonged recession, with a continued decline in housing prices and employment whose end was not yet in sight.
Does this presage an American or global depression? Can anything be done now to prevent further deflation in asset values, further unemployment and family economic woe?
Of course it can. We can immediately begin to spend enough on national priorities (like education, energy, infrastructure, defense, etc.) to rapidly reach full employment.
This spending can be undertaken with no taxes to pay for it -- until and unless taxes are needed to prevent hoarding or attempted diversion of labor and materials from national priority allocations.
Thus the current crises offer a path to functional finance and economic democracy if we create federal and state procurement programs on the scale of WW II to become an arsenal for peace, green systems, and prosperity, for America, its local governments, and all other nations who follow suit.