It’s 1937. No, it’s 1938! Or is it 1930? Talk About Lousy Choices…

[OhioChick]

August 2, 2011, 2:51 PM ET

Like a Poltergeist, the 1930s keep popping up in otherwise polite conversation.

Saying “1930s” is a way of saying Great Depression without really saying that. Sort of a like saying “budget cuts” when what’s actually taking place is a reduction in the rate of projected spending growth.

Anyhow, you know things are not very good when the “1930s” start getting more frequent mentions. Here are three recent evocations of that horrible decade of dust bowls, bank failures and strangely excellent movies. (1939 alone had Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Goodbye Mr. Chips and Stagecoach.)

Number one. With Washington preparing to take a butter knife to the multi-trillion-dollar Federal debt, it all looks very 1930s to Irwin Kellner, an economist writing for Dow Jones Newswires:

More: http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011/08/02/its-1937-no-its-1938-or-is-it-1930-talk-about-lousy-choices/

Snip: "This environment calls for more government spending to support the economy–not less, as we seem to be headed for. You would think that Washington’s politicians have either forgotten the lessons of history, or never bothered to learn it in the first place."

[phantom power]

1. Definitely 1930 -- we are clearly under a neo-Hooverist government.

[MannyGoldstein]

2. Agreed 1930-1931 or so.

This sucks. How do we fix it?

[phantom power]

4. In my heart of hearts? I'm now mostly convinced America is going to (re)learn the hard way.

Winter is on us. Too many people forgot too many lessons. It's all going to burn to the ground, and we're going to have to re-invent the New Deal from the ashes, when my daughter becomes an adult. Assuming I can keep her safe through Depression 2.0

Hopefully we'll eventually get a new FDR, as opposed to a new Hitler. Could go either way, I think.

[RagAss]

3. It's 1911 !

[CanonRay]

5. It's 1933 but Millard Fillmore is in the White House

instead of FDR.