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Founded in 1994, Frugal Muse Books is a small, independently owned chain of bookstores serving Madison, Wisconsin and Suburban Chicago. We truly appreciate our customers' patronage and friendship over the years, without which our success would ring quite hollow indeed. Here's to many more years of recycling all these wonderful books, movies, and music that we all cherish so much!

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Calling out the Party Crashers: a Review of Thom Hartmann's The Crash of 2016

 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. 

Contact us at (630) 427-1140 or visit our website at www.frugalmusebooks.com for more info.









Thursday, September 19, 2013

Can Used Media Stores Avoid Extinction?


 In an era of convenient online shopping, downloads and e-books, how can brick-and-mortar resale shops compete?  Everywhere one looks, used book, music, movie and now even gaming stores are closing their doors as e-books, e-retailers and torrent download sites expand their domination in the media market.  Cries of “shop local” and “recycle” have become commonplace bohemian chic, but in this fast-paced world in which convenience is king, are there enough brave souls willing to forsake e-commerce to save America's used media stores?

Browsing used to be a favorite pastime of the resale and consignment crowd, but nowadays, in an age when many people are either too busy or lazy to go bargain hunting (unless it's on the Internet, of course), how can resale shops survive?  How can they compete with the clout and convenience of powerful online retailers that don't have to contend with the costs and hassles of brick-and-mortar facilities, not to mention the often arduous task of dealing with the fickle emotions of face-to-face marketing?  There is an old business adage about turning perceived or even real weaknesses into strengths, and I believe it is in this wisdom that used media outlets should take their refuge.

Sure, online retailers have quick accessibility and name recognition on their side, advantages with which mom-and-pop retailers simply cannot compete; but there are several key advantages in brick-and-mortar's favor, advantages that harken back to America's halcyon days of genuine customer service and hospitality.  Resale shops offer a friendly, hassle-free atmosphere in which employees often know their customers by name; they help keep consumer dollars and jobs in the local economy; they allow people a vehicle for recycling their unwanted media back through the community; and they treat consumers like people, not numbers or dollar signs.  People browsing resale shops can see and touch the merchandise while engaging in friendly human interaction and barter.  Don't most of us occasionally need to turn off the internet and become human again, if only for the brief time it takes to pop down to the local record shop to check out the latest acquisition of Beatles albums?

I understand and even appreciate the friction-free consumerism of the internet, the frugality of free downloads, and the environmental and space-saving benefits of
e-books.  But I don't want to live in a world in which most activity is mediated by some sort of computer screen.  I believe people still yearn for real human interaction, and there is ample evidence.  They still go to the movies in droves:  Last year was Hollywood's highest grossing year on record, with $10.84 billion in profits; and the sheer number of tickets sold in the first four months of this year alone (1.17 billion) suggests that 2013 will far exceed the most attended box office year of the past three decades (1.58 billion in all of 2002).  And it's not just movies people are flocking to.  According to a recent Nightclub & Bar survey of bar owners, the majority of respondents indicated revenue increases exceeding 10% over the past few years, while only 3.4% reported revenue declines.  Add to that all the sold-out music concerts at record-high ticket prices and you can only come to one conclusion:  recession and higher prices be damned, Americans' appetite for entertainment can never be satisfied.

So let's not sound the death knell for resale just yet, especially if used media outlets can add entertainment to their list of commodities.  Discounts and sales are fine, but entertainment—the right kind of entertainment—will get them in the door nearly every time.  Such entertainment can take many forms:  live music, free food and drinks, trivia nights; book signings, book club meetings and open mic nights for poets and prose writers.  Our bookstore recently hosted a simple kids' face painting party with free snacks, and there was a long line of kids for the entire duration of the event.  We can bemoan the growing asocial nature of our society all we like, but I choose to believe, along with author Don Delillo, that “The future belongs to crowds.”

Simply put, if used media retailers provide compelling reasons for consumers to come to their shops, they will ultimately sell more products.  What they are really “selling” when they offer free public entertainment is good will and camaraderie, something unfortunately in short supply these days.  Of course, if some shopkeepers don't care to offer entertainment to their customers, they can always at least offer free
wi-fi.

Paul Garrison is Manager of Frugal Muse Books, Music & Movies in Darien, IL
You can visit them at frugalmusebooks.com

Sources:  Entertainment Weekly (EW.com)
                The Numbers (the-numbers.com)

                Nightclub & Bar (nightclub.com)