In doing research for a book about a member of the Greatest Generation, I’ve found some fascinating parallels between what was happening to America’s economy in the late 1930s and now.  As a result, I have come to the conclusion that we may well be doing the same thing all over again and, yet again, expecting a different outcome. According to Amity Shlaes’s 2007 book, The Forgotten Man, then, as now, “[t]he new Fed law had created stricter reserve requirements for banks. Forced to keep more cash, banks cut back on loans. ... By the month of [Andrew] Mellon’s death [August, 1937], more than a billion dollars had thus been extinguished.”  Under current Treasury secretary Yellen, much the same thing is happening now. Then, too, there were payments into the new (1935) Social Security program, “also taking money out of circulation.”  In the same year, the Wagner Act, allowing workers in the private sector to vote for...(Read Full Post)