Up and Down Wall Street: Worse Than You Ever Dreamed - Barrons.com

Up and Down Wall Street: Worse Than You Ever Dreamed - Barrons.com

One could use the term "ominous parallels" but I believe that's the title of someone else's book.

Somehow the analogies start to stand out from a wonderful old book by a now retired professor from the University of Chicago entitled "Plagues and Peoples".

It goes over the affects on the Roman Empire of the plagues which decimated its Mediterranean population in the 2nd century AD and then later.

The net result was a diminished tax-paying population to support the Roman armies on the frontier. (We all know what happened next.)

Similarly today, the plague is government and entitlement spending. It keeps the society from realizing its economic potential (except of course for the macro and microparasitic elements themselves running the government and receiving the entitlements).

The ongoing discussions of the Dark Ages are interesting to consider - i.e. will government and entitlements get reined in (which Obama's budget clearly resists) or not. Just like dealing with a disease and epidemic.