American History

[Bob]

I just finished JUSTINIAN'S FLEA.....While i liked it as it was well written, I thought it should have had more o the Plague. It has interesting sections, even chapters, on the natural history of bactyeria, and information on the rat and the flea, the information on the plague is scattered throughout the book. If you like Roman history its great...it also has inrteresting pieces on the history of the Middle East, China and just plain pieces of informatioin you never thought about. I'd read again even though I was disappointed on the extent of the plague information.

[Bob]

>>>>Robert, any recommendation on the history of financial panics from CW and to WWI? ---->>>>

Sorry for the delay in answering. There is a very good new book available on The Gilded Age (1865-1900) which emphasizes financial affairs. I'll try and look it up tonight. If I don't find it, I know where its at at B&N and I stop in the  bookstore daily, so at the very latest I'll give you the title tomorrow. Off the top of my head  there was a downturn at the end of the war--then, of course there was the Panic associated with the attempt to corner the Gold Market (Jay Gould and the Boys), the Panic of 1873, of 1893 and  of 1907 (starring JP Morgan). There was an economic downturn in 1900 which is not classified as a panic, but should be looked at.

[weezo]

Bpb.

Traditionally, you have set the dates to start discussions. My role is only with the poll. Nothing else is changing. Looks like more want to read 1421 than any other book. Or do you want another poll just among the books that got votes. You callit.

[weezo]

Bob,

Because of the controversies surrounding 1421 and it's role as speculative history, it should be a lively discussion. The runner up was Cross of Iron, on the Truman Doctrine.

[Bob]

I think we've given everyone well enough chance to vote. Let's start the discussion 0n August 20---that'll give everyone a chance to get and read the book. I can get the book tomorrow....If any of the others (there are only three at this point) can get and read the book sooner we can change the date. I need to re-read the book since its been a while since I last saw it---I used my friend's copy the first time around.

[Bob]

Are we OK for the 20th?

[weezo]

Dunno about anyone else, but it suits me.

[Bob]

Unless an objection is raised, the 20th it shall be.

Getting back to the question of Banking Panics in America from 1865 to 1917, the new book I was referring to is THE AGE OF BETRYAL by Jack Beatty. There are two others--both standards, but expensive: MONETARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 1867-1960 by the conservative economist Milton Friedman--excellent to say the least....the othe is BANKING PANICS OF THE GILDED AGE  by Elmus Wicker, also top notch....

Speaking of which, its my belief the chickens are coming home to roost. The mortgage market is in near collapse and caused a serious stock market loss yesterday. This is a sign of an economy in trouble, probably in contraction. But my real fear is that of inflation brought on as usual by debt  financing (through bonds rather than tax revenues) of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the deficit financing of the War on Terror. Inflation caused by wartime financing is endemic in America. Usually it occurs after the war, but this time I see it as starting earlier. Anyhow, the near collapse of the  mortgage market is a bad sign indeed. The Administration has refused to raise taxes to finance anything and has, quite to the contrary, cut much needed current programs--the economic policies are now about to backfire----OH, for a good ole fashioned economist of the old days--the ones who used to take history into account, not just statistical models...Does any University teach Political Economy anymore?---that's the type of economics I was was schooled in during the 60's--before they switched to the mathematical models (which drive me crazy with their disregard for practicality).  The ability of the economist to predict even the near future is almost nil. They are almost always wrong and yet still command much respect and lots of bucks...even weathermen have a higher success rate..

[madupont]

Bob

Yes, it is the first thing forwarded by the New York Times this morning.
Can't say it wasn't predicted.

[nnyhav]

Thank you, Robert.

On chickens roosting: My question was prompted by comparison of current conditions to those of the late Gilded Age, the last time that wealth was so polarized, the last time the economy so globalized -- one can draw other analogies, e.g. industrial/transport to informational/telecom. My concerns are not of inflation-driven, but of capital, contraction, which hasn't happened since WW2. The tightening of mortgage credit (as house price appreciation vanished) seems now to be hitting corporate credit -- no more bad new loans (through syndication -- distributing risk isn't the same as eliminating it) to bail out bad old ones (or acquire controlling equity), keeping the default rates down (until they pop to compensate).

I would disagree on one other point. Economics is a marginal science -- whatever its basis, it fails when used as a core driver of policy (eg, stagflation refuting Keynesianism at least in part). Current policy seems designed to try to 'monetize' the dollar's status as reserve currency (as sterling was a century ago). It seems that trying to find the proper historical analogue always mixes metaphors, though.

[Bob]

I like your analysis and can see the logic to it, although my belief is that though that's  the way things may begin, as they are now, with capital contraction, inflation will soon start, much as it did after Vietnam, pushed by oil problems....

I'm afraid, though I hold a degree in Economics, that I have never considered it a science of any sort. I think we kid ourselves overemphasizing what are called the social sciences, when there's little science to them. But that's another subject. Maybe we can find a book on the age old dispute, which was going on hot and heavy when I was in college on whether Sociology ought ever to have been created as a separate discipline and called be called a "science." Economics is an art which can and does utilize scientific tools--But I don't belive it even to be a marginal science---(but I do respect that I'm in the minority and that your proposition is generally accepted).

[weezo]

Bob,

I agree. Economics uses math, but it uses it more to prove what is already believed more than to discover new theories. I learned Keynesian economics, and have distrusted the newer theories, which seem to fail and fall on a regular basis. I just sent an email to a colleague, about the anti-NCLB movement, and we were talking about how sad it is that tests have replaced teaching as the purpose of putting a kid in a desk to "learn". (If you want to see the cartoon, the link is on the education board!) The best part is the introduction by the president in his usual misappropriation of grammar. And, he is a  product of all those fancy private schools that we are told do so much better than the underfunded public schools!

I am enthused by the introduction of hard science into the study of history, as we all saw when we read Helen Roundtree's book on Pocahontas. Between my first and second reading of her, I read the Jamestown Narratives, on which much of our historical "knowledge" of the Native Americans was previously based, and noticed how often they were dead wrong in their understanding of the new people the encountered. Makes me wonder how much else of "recorded history" is just as dead wrong!

[madupont]

Speaking of finances and economics

"Jock Whitney. John Hay Whitney (named after his maternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln’s private secretary) was evidently remarkable for his good qualities in relationship to others but also his good qualities in relationship to himself. Of course, few would ever tell me much about his “bad” qualities. Although perhaps he was one of those rara avis (and there are those) who really did not have much to criticize.

Mr. Whitney, who was born in 1904, was born to great wealth. Here in New York the family lived at 972 Fifth, just two blocks down from 79th Street, in a house designed by Stanford White for his parents. He was the second (and last child) with a sister Joan (Whitney Payson who started the Mets) who was a couple of years older. He was an intelligent boy, a Yalie, a goodlooking young man who was considered one of the most eligible bachelors in the world until he married a very beautiful young woman from Philadelphia named Elizabeth Altemus (and then known for the rest of her life as Liz Whitney or Liz Whitney Tippett – her second husband).

The marriage didn’t take very well, however. Mrs. Whitney, a horse (and animal) woman of the first order spent her times in the stables and young Jock spent a good deal of the time (this was in the 1930s) in Los Angeles where he was anxious to make a name in the picture business.

He and his cousin Cornelius (“Sonny”) Vanderbilt Whitney started a company named Pioneer Pictures and produced the first full length Technicolor film, “Becky Sharp.” A few years later, in production partnership with David O. Selznick, one of Mr. Whitney’s assistants, a woman named Kay Brown, came to him with a then still-unpublished novel called “Gone With The Wind” and Mr. Whitney bought it. His partner Mr. Selznick made it into the classic although at the end of his life, he sold his share of the rights back to Mr. Whitney.

Jock Whitney’s  marriage to Liz gave him time and room to have other women in his life, and he did. He was very well known among his set for providing all kinds of financial security for the girls he spent time with.

In 1940, Jock Whitney divorced his first wife and married Betsey Cushing Roosevelt (recently divorced from James, the eldest son of Eleanor and Franklin). The couple maintained homes in Manhattan, Manhasset (Greentree estate), and several other locations. There were always scads of staff, greenhouses providing fresh flowers and private planes to take them where they needed to go. There is the story that once when he and his brother-in-law William Paley were planning a trip down to the Caribbean with the wives, Whitney suggested they send all their baggage down in his older plane ahead of them, and then they’d fly in the newer, faster Paley plane later. A prince’s sense of practical logistics. Once when Whitney was in bed with an ailment, Paley went to visit him. The two men were watching television together and when Paley couldn’t find the remote to change the channel, Whitney buzzed his butler. That was his remote.

After the Second World War where he served in the OSS and his lieutenants later created the CIA, Whitney invested some of his fortune in a fund that was referred to as “Adventure Capital.” The idea was to fund some of the business prospects and ideas of men he’d met in the service who would be looking for things to do when they got out. Their early investments included something called Memorex which became the infant of the now Digital Age. And MinuteMaid which was the beginning of the frozen orange juice  business. The term “Adventure” got shortened to “venture” and Venture Capital became a profession.

In the 1950s Eisenhower named him Ambassador to the Court of St. James. The British loved him because he was the most Anglo of any ambassador they’d had. When he finished his term, he bought the New York Herald Tribune and made a valiant albeit failed attempt to beat out the New York Times. Forty years later people who were there remember the Trib with fondness. Tom Wolfe got his big break on the Trib (writing for its new Sunday magazine called “New York” –which later became its own magazine). Dick Schaap started with the Trib, as did Jimmy Breslin, and Jill Krementz as a staff photographer. It was a good literate paper. The unions killed it.

Jock Whitney liked theatre people. Fred Astaire was one of his best buddies. And he was a loyal friend. A man named Shipwreck Kelly (who’d once been married to debutante Brenda Frazier) was given a lifelong residence on one of the Whitney houses on the Long Island estate.

He was always well turned out. He was quick to laugh, and always eager. He lived at all times like a king and shared the wealth. He loved the company of women and liked the world of sports. To those men and women who knew him he is remembered as “the consummate gentleman,” gracious, courteous, impeccably turned out, humorous, friendly, generous and walked with kings."

New York Social Diary    for August 3rd.2007

[weezo]

Maddie,

In or about 1940, what "remote" was Paley looking for to change the channel? There would have only been the butler. And, I do think that the tv was invented a bit after 1940, closer to the end of that decade. But you tell a good story, as usual.

[Bob]

I do think that the tv was invented a bit after 1940, closer to the end of that decade

The paragraph having to do with the "remote" is obviously out of sequence.

However, TV is one of those things which developed, rather than invented. Development began way, way back and was in full swing by the late 1920's. (See anything about Philo P Farmsworth--the guy who really got screwed out of his due in the process). Anyhow, there's an interesting series of scenes in an old Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) movie which takes place in a TV studio. That was in the 40's....and then, there's always the people down the road from here who invented Cable TV in 1948. I use their cable services unto this day.

I'll have to look up when the remote control was invented.

I do know that Paley and General Sarnoff were engaged in one hellava race to develop a workable color TV system and that Sarnoff won. Color was around as early as the early 1950's but was never compatable with black and white sets. Sarnoff's NBC developed a compatable picture tube and then color Tv emerged in the late 1950's or early 1960's.

I'm so old I remember Jock Whitney as Ambassador to England.