The Crash of 2008

They say hindsight is always 20-20, so let’s take a trip into the future and look in the rear view mirror at what’s happening right now in America. It is 2083, and a writer named Nick Taylor is examining the causes of the Crash of 2008 and the decade-long economic depression that followed. Observing that by the time Hillary Obama took office as President of the United States, a quarter of the nation’s workforce had “no jobs, and no hopes,” Taylor writes in what will become an all-time bestseller in apocalyptic non-fiction:

“Factoring in their families, this meant that nearly half the nation’s population was literally without support: no money for rent, no food to feed their children, no coats against the wintry cold. Factories lay idle, storefronts vacant, fields plowed under. State governments, cities and towns had exhausted their meager relief funds. The desolation knew no boundaries: the skilled and the unskilled alike stood on the breadlines, waiting their turns in soup kitchens, scavenging in town dumps; when they were evicted from their homes they built impromptu shacks to house their families until the police came and knocked the shanty towns down. This did not have to happen. That it did was dictated by a revered American political philosophy that denied the central government a role in addressing social problems.”

“Labor is a commodity, like iron ore or cotton, to be purchased on the open market at the cheapest price. It was outlandish to think that employers would have any interest in their employees beyond their productive capacity, and even odder to think that the federal government would interfere by telling them how to treat their workers. As for human health and welfare, these were private matters.

“The economic crisis had exposed gross disparities between the rich and the poor. There were two Americas, and they were vastly different …. one percent of the people owned 59 percent of Americas wealth.

“The national government waged war and conducted foreign policy and economic policy, but virtually its only domestic role was to compile the necessary information for business and industry and bring it to the attention of leaders in the private sector and in state and local governments.”

Taylor is unsparing in his criticism of the man who preceded Hillary Obama, using actual quotes from the DOOFUS POTUS to put him in his proper historic niche between Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.

Two months after the stock market lost 90 percent of its value in the Crash of 2008, DOOFUS POTUS opined publicly: “The cure for unemployment is to find jobs.”

Another month into what would become a 10-year hell for millions of people, he told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “I am convinced that we have now passed the worst.”

Sticking to a set of beliefs by that time as bankrupt as most of the major businesses in the country, DOOFUS POTUS counseled: “No government action, no economic doctrine, no economic plan or project can replace that God-imposed responsibility of the individual man and woman to their neighbors.” The depression, he said, was a “passing incident in our national life,” and “the number who are threatened with privation is a minor percentage.”

“What this country needs is a good big laugh,” he said just after the stock market tanked and bankers began jumping off buildings. “There seems to be a condition of hysteria. If someone could get off a good joke every 10 days, I think our troubles would be over.” And his evaluation of the human condition rivaled the “welfare queen” fabrication of another, long forgotten DOOFUS POTUS: “Nobody is actually starving. The hoboes, for example, are better fed than they have ever been. One hoboe in New York got ten meals in one day.”

In his memoirs, DOOFUS POTUS writes: “Many persons left their jobs for the more profitable one of selling apples.”

Okay, okay, okay. Enough tawdry lies. Nick Taylor (an old and dear friend) isn’t writing 75 years in the future, he’s writing 75 years in the past in his terrific new book American-Made, The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work. DOOFUS POTUS isn’t George W. Bush at all, but another brilliant gift from the GOP, Herbert Hoover. Hillary Obama, of course, is Franklin D. Roosevelt. And the Crash of 2008 is actually the Crash of 1929 (ours is likely to be more of a Schplat than a Crash, thanks to the patching up of a few FDR safety nets by Neo-New Dealers Ben Baranke and Hank Paulson). But it’s still scary, huh?

Nick’s book is now for sale in better bookstores and online through Amazon and Border’s. I’ll do a full review as soon as I finish it, but you might want to get ahead of the future by buying it right now. As for me, I’m going by the Fidelity office today, withdrawing what’s left in my 401K and putting it all in the the fridge (so what’s so bad about one less ice tray?).