THE HISTORY LESSON

SANTAYANA'S CURSE

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” George Santayana famously warned. In his brilliant new book, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, Robert Reich demonstrates the truth of Santayana's curse; Wall Street has repeated the sins that led to the Great Depression and is ignoring the lessons it taught.

Republicans today have taken the same position their party did during Hoover's administration and are echoing his multimillionaire Secretary of Treasury, Andrew Mellon's, advice to let farms, businesses, and individuals fail because, “It will purge the rottenness out of the system.” Of course that did not keep them from agreeing to bail out the mega-banks, but it fuels their opposition to everything in Obama's jobs bill. They seem to be saying that it is okay to let the poor starve as long as the top 1% isn't made to pay higher taxes.

The Great Depression ended, in part, because FDR took the advice of former Wall Street tycoon Marriner Eccles who shared John Maynard Keynes economic philosophy. Today there is no Eccles counterpart on the scene (unless it is Reich) so it has fallen to the “mob” to teach economic theory to Washington, and to the nation. The Occupy movement view may be summarized by the words on one of the homemade signs carried by a young girl Oakland, “The Beginning is Near!” We do not yet know what that “beginning” will lead to, but history shows us incontrovertibly that it must lead to a dramatic reduction in the chasm that divides the top 1% from the rest of us. That is the lesson history teaches, a lesson not lost on the Occupiers. Santayana would be impressed.