Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

.
To: ReadingLiberallyEmailList@johnkarls.com
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Bcc: Our Approximately 150 E-mail List
Sent: Sat April 23 0930 > 1043 MDT
Subject: Short Quiz - Debtor Nation
Attach:


Dear Friends,

Our next meeting is Wed Eve May 11th at the Salt Lake Public Library (210 East 400 South).

***********************************************
MAY 11TH TOPIC

Our focus will be "Debtor Nation" by Louis Hyman, available from your local library, or from Amazon.com for $29.35 + shipping.

Louis Hyman is a 2007 PhD in American History from Harvard who became an Assistant Professor of History at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. His book, released 1/23/2011, is an update and embellishment of his doctoral dissertation which was entitled "Debtor Nation: How Consumer Credit Built Postwar America."

It was recommended by June Taylor (aka Utah Owl) because she had attended the Sundance Film Festival this past winter where she saw "The Flaw" which is a documentary directed by noted British filmmaker David Sington (e.g., "In The Shadow Of The Moon") and produced by Christopher Hird (e.g., "The End of the Line"). It was purchased during the Festival by New Video for commercial distribution later this year under its Docudrama Films brand.

"The Flaw" explores the reasons for the 2008-20?? crash of the American economy with interviews of two dozen noted economists, as well as Wall Street insiders and victims of the crash. The film's title is inspired by former U.S. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's acknowledgment in testimony before a Senate investigating committee that there had been "a flaw" in his model of how the economy worked.

June reported that the Sundance screening of "The Flaw" was followed by a Q&A session featuring David Sington and Louis Hyman during the course of which Sington credited Hyman's book with explaining the "why" of the crash -- that Sington had expected the Wall Street experts to provide the "why" but all they could provide was the "how"!!! Sington gave Hyman major credit for Sington's understanding of the crisis, and the story line of the film.

About his doctoral dissertation, Louis Hyman has written --

"My dissertation is about how what we call personal debt, that is debt incurred by individuals and not by businesses, went from being owed to other people to being owed to institutions, and what this has meant at the largest level about American capitalism. In the dissertation, Debtor Nation: How Consumer Credit Built Postwar America, I wanted to know how personal debt, which was at the end of the nineteenth century illicit, illegal, and always personal, became by the end of the twentieth century legal, institutional, and shockingly condoned. How did it move from the smoky backrooms of loan sharks to the brightly lit boardrooms of multinationals? How did it move from the margin of capitalism to its center? How did consumer credit become a site of investment and profit, and by the choice of these investments, what was left out? What other investments did consumer credit lending crowd out? How did this growth of consumer credit reframe the largest business narratives of the twentieth century-the second industrial revolution at the beginning of the century and so-called "deindustrialization" at its end?"


***********************************************
SHORT QUIZ

*****
Disclaimer = Many of you assume that the answers to these monthly short quizzes are contained in the suggested reading materials. Usually there are no more than 2-3 days between the arrival of my copy from Amazon.com before the weekly e-mail that contains the quiz is due to be sent. Accordingly, the quiz typically comprises primarily questions I would like to see answered and, to some extent, questions for which I already know the answers. Both are particularly true this month!!!
*****

1. What is Louis Hyman's basic theory?

2. Is his emphasis on the American economy as being debt-driven rather than consumer-driven useful?

3. What was the character of the American economy and its financial structure prior to World War I?

4. What was, and when were, the Louisiana Purchase? The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo? The "Oklahoma Land Rush"?

5. What is the difference in population densities between Native American hunter-gatherer societies and European agrarian societies? What implications does this difference have for whether the European agrarians would be able to displace the Native-American hunter-gatherers?

6. Was there a famous phrase = "Go East, Young Woman"? What was the meaning of the correct phrase?

7. What is primogeniture? Does it help to explain the economic success of Europe and America? And the decline of the Arab Empire which had far outshone backward Europe from 800 AD > 1800 AD?

8. If under primogeniture, the oldest son inherits everything, what happens to the younger sons and what happens to the daughters? In this regard, is there a similarity in function between the worldwide empires of Britain, France, Spain, etc., and the American West?

9. What was the significance of the growth in the mortgage market between World War I and World War II?

10. Did the Post-World War II boom have anything to do with Louis Hyman's theory of a debt-driven economy? With the traditional analysis of a consumer-driven economy?

11. When did auto loans become prevalent? Credit cards?

12. Louis Hyman notes that all interest (not just mortgage interest) was fully deductible for federal income tax purposes until 1986 -- is his theory of why it had been deductible historically accurate?

13. Louis Hyman claims that credit was available to minorities and to women!!! Does this ring true?

14. What was "the flaw" in Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's understanding/misunderstanding of the American economy?

15. Is the American economy headed into the widely-feared "second dip"?

16. Why are European economies more resilient?

17. Why are Asian economies more resilient?

18. Are the gargantuan Keynesian deficits in the current U.S. governmental budgets capable of pulling the American economy out of its slump? Or, since the accumulated national debt has now reached the level of the Gross Domestic Product ("GDP") of the American economy, is there a danger that our national debt will sink to "junk bond" status (which might mean a 20% junk-bond interest rate and, consequently, the doubling of all federal tax rates because the federal budget, which has historically approximated 20% of GDP, now has to approximate 40% of GDP in order to pay the interest on the debt)?

19. How can the American economy function properly when our politicians love to ignore the permanent American underclass? After all, Jonathan Kozol has long chronicled that 30% of Americans are illiterate as measured by, for example, whether they are capable of reading the warning label on a can of rat poison!!! And that it is our politicians' policies (or lack thereof) that condemn inner-city children to perpetuate the permanent underclass, with no realistic career aspirations other than runner graduating to pusher and/or runner's girl friend graduating to whore!!!

20. Do such things as "free trade agreements" and the "free flow of capital" make sense for American citizens, or are these policies just more examples of how America (as documented by both Richard Kuttner, a columnist for Business Week for 20 years, and long-time Washington Post Columnist Dana Milbank in their books for our 2/14/2008 meeting) has the "best government money can buy"?

21. Is there anything our government does do well from an economic standpoint?

22. What policies should be implemented to preserve for Americans the benefits of what the American government does do well?

23. Are there any other economic policies that should be implemented if our objective is to protect American workers?

24. What do you think of the picture on the cover of Louis Hyman's book?


****************************************
We hope to see and hear all of you on May 11th!!!

Your friend,

John K.

PS - To un-subscribe, please press "reply" and type "deletion requested."

PPS - Our sister organization, Drinking Liberally, meets on Friday evenings for socializing with like-minded individuals from 6:30 pm > 9:30 pm at Piper Down (1492 South State Street).