I chose the article “The Shadow of Depression”. This article
talks about the Great Depression and how it relates to the recent recession of
2007 and the depression of today. The comparison between the two is vague. At
first the author talks about how the recession was so bad by today’s standards.
An economic historian of the University of California at Berkeley said that “Unfortunately,
the similarities [between then and now] are growing more striking every day”
(Eichengreen). This is a very vague interpretation. An economic historian has a
lot of credibility, but to say that between then and now, there are many
similarities and that they are growing seems ridiculous. In 1933, unemployment
peaked at 25 percent. In today’s depression, it only reached a peak or about 9
percent. I believe the author did not do the best job writing this article. He
states at the beginning of the article that “…we are falling into a deep economic
ravine from which escape will be difficult” (Samuelson). Every depression is a “deep
economic ravine”. At first in the article, he starts with a scare tactic and
then he goes in to some statistics about both depressions. After that, he talks
about the government’s aggressive policies to help with recovery. Near the end,
he talks about what other countries should do with their money to help with the
world wide depression. Finally, at the end, he closes with the fact that if
people stopped conserving cash and started to spend it, that that is what would
bring us out of the depression.
You've done a good job of identifying some of the author's strategies. Now, take it a step further and talk about how those strategies affected YOU as a reader. Did they work? Why or why not?
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