by P. K. Garrison
Author
and TV/radio show host Thom Hartmann has something he wants us to know: namely that the United States of America is
about to experience another Great Depression that he calls, in the very title
of his new book, The Crash of 2016.
But what does Hartmann know that we don't? Actually, not much—that is, if we listen
regularly to his radio show on Chicago's WCPT, or watch one of his two
television offerings on RT and Free Speech TV.
And not a heck of a lot more, frankly, than the authors of The Fourth
Turning, William Strauss and Neil Howe, whom Hartmann openly credits with
providing the central idea in Crash.
But it is the uncanny and straightforward manner in which Hartmann puts
all his ideas together that make this book an indispensable read for anyone
attempting to navigate the bumpy waters of the current American economy.
Hartmann’s
a modern-day brickaleur of difficult and disparate information—of seeming
enigmas and red herrings in the face of which most of us just throw up our
hands and say with a sigh, “Well, I hope somebody somewhere is trying to figure
it all out.” Somebody is, and that
somebody has written his 25th book so that the rest of us can figure it all out
too. A friend of mine recently told me,
when he learned that I was writing a book review of Crash, that the book
sounded like a pretty grim prediction coming from a guy who's a self-proclaimed
optimist, which he is. I explained to my
friend that, true to Hartmann's optimistic nature, he subtitled his book “The
Plot to Destroy America—and What We Can Do to Stop It.” What I didn't know at the time, not yet
having read the book, was that, despite the subtitle, Hartmann deems said “crash”
inevitable, unavoidable despite our best and brightest efforts. Sheesh!
So much for optimism. This guy's
giving it to us as he sees it. He'd
never make it as a politician. He even
agrees with author Morris Berman's assessment of the likelihood that America
will experience a century-long “repeat of the feudal Dark Ages,” for Pete's
sake.
So
why the subtitle, then? Well, as it
turns out, it's one of the few errors in the entire book, since it should
read “The Plot to Destroy America—and What We Can Do to Mitigate Its
Consequences.” For there is a
silver lining in Crash that belies its inevitability, a hopefulness that
the author is quick to tell us has existed within every crash our country has
experienced since it's inception—even before its inception, actually, since the
crash of the 1760s eventually led to Britain's Tea Act of 1773 and, ultimately,
to the American Revolution and our nation's founding (incidentally, the Boston
Tea Party was not a reaction to increased taxes, as most Tea Partiers are
wont to insist, but a reaction to the lowering of taxes on the Crown's
East India Tea Company, which essentially granted that company a monopoly and
threatened the existence of American tea companies and general American
hegemony). Anyway, Hartmann begins his
book by deftly plumbing the depths of the three previous American crashes (Did
you know there were three? One
would be hard-pressed nowadays to find many citizens who know there were more
than one, actually): the aforementioned
crash of the 1760s following the French and Indian War, the Great Panic of 1857
that led to the Civil War and, of course, the Great Depression that led, in
part, to World War II, all of which stand approximately eighty years apart from
one another. Such cycles, Hartmann insists,
are not coincidental, as eighty years (approximately every fourth generation) comprise
the time it takes for the oldest living generation to die out, leaving the
subsequent generation to experience what Daniel Quinn has called “a Great
Forgetting” that leaves a culture susceptible to all sorts of disastrous
historical repetitions, to the whims of the “Economic Royalists,” a phrase
Hartmann borrows from FDR.
Throughout
Crash Hartmann provides the reasons for these cyclical crashes, which
always come down the same political policies:
tax cuts for the rich, financial deregulation and cuts to entitlements
for the poor that shift massive sums of wealth upward (which sums more or less redouble
after the crisis, when the corporate bailouts begin) as well as
unaffordable wars that inflate the deficit so high that the culprits finally
declare a moratorium on. . .no, of course not on defense spending but on those
dreaded “entitlements,” which ironically include programs like social security
that we recipients, the working stiffs, pay into. And just who are the culprits? Why, the very same “Economic Royalists” of
whom Franklin Roosevelt warned way back in the 1930s, after they crashed the
economy so badly that it took a world war and 85 million deaths to end the
breadlines and get America back on track.
Call them the Robber Barons, elitists, fascists, the 1% or whatever you
like, Hartmann tells us, but they're hell-bent on crashing—and then cashing in
on—Uncle Sam's party all over again.
So
where, you may be asking yourself, is Hartmann's evidence that another big
crash is just around the corner? Well,
it's not simply the fact that the eighty-year mark was a good four years
ago. No, that's only the beginning. Hartmann lays out the hard evidence as well
as any attorney worth his or her salt, beginning with the alarming fact that
billionaires the world over are busy “hoarding record amounts of cash” (i.e.,
Apple “sitting on $137 billion and Wall Street, the very same savvy financial
moguls who brought us the Great Recession of 2008, stuffing a whopping $1.6
trillion under their collective mattress).
“Altogether,” writes Hartmann, “the wealthiest people on the planet have
as much as $32 trillion stashed away in overseas financial institutions,
according to a study by the Tax Justice Center in 2012.” As the Boy Scouts like to say, “Be
prepared.” Add to this the planned
crises and subsequent prescriptive “austerity” in Greece and Spain, which
Hartmann (and many economists, by the way) believe foreshadows in miniature the
pitfalls of the over-rapid growth of Chinese industry (supply grossly
overestimating demand—sound familiar?), the likelihood of “oil shock” (rising
oil prices due to shortages) that would in turn raise the prices of everything
from breakfast cereals to minivans and, of course, America's costly and insane military adventures and you have the perfect
recipe for homegrown catastrophe. And
you thought Timothy McVeigh was dangerous.
It
is this latter, military aspect of all American crashes, including the next
great crash, that Hartmann seems reluctant to predict or even contemplate
(although he sort of counts the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as comprising the
double-headed military serpent of this crash, even though these wars preceded
the new crash by over a decade). And
with good reason—not only because America's military-industrial complex is now
so enormous as to be entirely unaccountable and therefore unpredictable, but
also because of the potential and unthinkable consequences that might arise
from a Great Depression redux (think Syria as a gateway to Iran, for example,
if you must think the unthinkable—in other words, think World War III!). Perhaps Hartmann is saving that doomsday
scenario for his next book.
Solutions
post-apocalypse, aka proven remedies for limiting the damage and avoiding
future such disasters? Thom Hartmann has
those too, and in spades: reduce the
national debt (wow, and this from a self-labeled “progressive), re-regulate
Wall Street so the responsible banks are separated from the derivatives
gamblers (simply reinstating Glass-Steagall would do the trick), overturn Citizens
United by amending the Constitution so corporations can no longer wield
unbridled financial influence in Washington and end the era of “judicial supremacy”
that allows the (unelected) justices to exact king-like authority in striking
down any law they deem unjust (or unappetizing), thus in essence rendering the
other two branches of government impotent.
Hartmann ends his chapter on solutions, which he dubs “Organized People
v. Organized Money,” with an oft-stated platitude: “The ultimate remedy,” he writes, “is with
the people—it's the ballot box.” Now,
as with the book's subtitle, I have to disagree, at least until we have more
than two parties—ideally five or more, to my mind—competing for the right to
make decisions in our name. “If we don't
like the laws being passed,” Hartmann cheerily assures us, “then we elect new
legislators and a new president. It's
pretty simple.” In reading The Crash
of 2016 I was nodding along with the author most of the way, but this
statement reminded me of the old adage employed by tyrants and revolutionaries
alike: “You can kill me, but there are
ten more just like me waiting to take my place.” In other words, fire a particularly odorous
senator, replace said senator with someone equally as smelly. I've read several of Thom Hartmann's books,
and I would never suggest that he is in any way naïve; yet referring desperate
readers, some of whom have lost their jobs and/or homes, to the ballot box
almost seems patronizing, at least in our current political climate, though I
know Hartmann would never intend such patronization.
Hartmann
isn't your garden variety conspiracy theorist, and I'm certain he wouldn't
label himself as such at all, despite the pernicious intent he assigns to the
collusive “Economic Royalists” that have plagued us since long before FDR lent
them that descriptive pejorative (one wonders whether the likes of Ben Bernanke
would consider it a pejorative). He
supports every argument with mountains of support, and most of it from
mainstream sources. It's hard to imagine
a credible retort to Hartmann's new book, whether from Libertarian circles,
hard-core leftist organizations or hard right-wing publications. One reads The Crash of 2016 (and I
myself checked many of the author's sources and could find no mistakes or major
omissions) more as objective history than political critique, which only adds
to the general malaise that remains in one's gut long after the last sentence
has been digested.
Crash
crashes the American party, even for those of us who'd long stopped thinking of
our country's exploits as a “party.” As
with all parties, the party must end.
But Hartmann wants us to know that after our party (lean though it may
be, especially for the poorest sectors of our society) and after our painful
hangover, another party looms around the corner, ready to rise from the
shredded confetti and wine-stained shards of a broken economy—if only we have
the courage, as we did after the Great Depression, to face our grim reality and
begin building a better democracy.
Thom Hartmann will be returning to the Frugal Muse in Darien to do a talk and book signing on Thursday, November 14th from 7pm-9pm.
The Crash of 2016 comes out November 12th. Pre-order your copy from our store today to receive 25% off the original list price.
