4:17AM
Broder on closer for Obama
Saturday, September 20, 2008 at 4:17AM OP-ED: "Down Days for McCain," by David S. Broder, Washington Post, 18 September 2008, p. A21.
Economy crushes lipstick-on-pigs debate (oh so compelling) and exposes long McCain record on de-regulation.
Problem: we head, I argue, into period or re-regulation, progressive reform (so very TR), and new rules.
Globalization feels more out of control, and Obama speaks better to that dynamic.
Reader Comments (1)
Railroads were a major Gee Whiz theme. The civil war showed their potential to change things. As a result, the steel industry and related mass production and mass agriculture had great potential. A young Abraham Lincoln had earlier helped to fund a very successful Illinois Central railroad. His experience was used as an example that railroads were good investments.
Wall Street's bond and stock markets were started to provide massive marketable capital to fund our new railroad, heavy industry and land development opportunities. One of those opportunities was an East-West Transcontinental railroad. Besides opening our West, it could also provide a land link to speed the trade and travel between Europe and Asia. The original project promoter said a single railroad would be profitable after decades and should be funded by farmers and merchants along the route. His pragmatism was swept aside and soon three American railroads were being funded by risky bonds sold here and in Europe.
But the Central/Southern Pacific executives used their merchant and real estate contacts to arrange repetitive short term loans and some bonds while keeping stock to themselves except for a token amount to establish a market price. When a Wall Street broker did a naked short against them, they used their company cash to buy out available stock, increase its market value, and bankrupt that broker.
When the excess railroad capacity was realized and the bond and stocks of other railroads crashed, the Central Pacific saw its stock value rise and they sold their personal stock at great profit. They used other cash to pay down their short term debt and buy up railroad construction and operation equipment stuff from rivals for cents on a dollar.
British politicians pressed America to abandon its free market view of commercial finance and intervene on behalf of their bondholders, or there would be no European $ for other American ventures that were underway, and that would increase the domestic crisis.
Other boom & bust financial cycles followed. Fortunately most Americans had access to small rural garden food and simple housing to cushion their crises, but they would be much more vulnerable as the economy transformed.
That was the background for TR Progressive thinking, observing reality not theory based ideology.