infrogmation | Twenty Years Ago Today

20 years ago was the "Black Monday" stock market crash of 1987.

I happened to be in Washington, D.C. visiting an aunt. Taking the subway downtown the next morning, I saw men in expensive suits buying bottles of liquor on their way to work. Possibly that was their usual routine, but I doubted it.

I went to the bank and withdrew cash. I was surprised there was no substantial line. I thought bank runs were supposed to be the usual procedure in such circumstances.

I was a bit frustrated to be away from New Orleans on vacation when this happened, as for some time I'd had a contingency radio show planned to do in case of stock market crash, with tunes from the '29 crash. "Damn, I'm missing my chance."

And President Reagan's words of reassurance were almost the same as Herbert Hoover's. I thought, Don't they keep an index card in a drawer in the desk at the Oval Office, marked "In case of stock market crash, DON'T SAY THIS:"...

Were a few friends of mine and I the only ones who remembered history? A few days later my friends and I talked it over. One said that the Republicans bring a boom, then a bust. I cracked wise "Y'know why people aren't jumping out of windows on Wall Street this time? In modern skyscrapers you can't open the windows." A friend noted some recent murders in the news, which to him showed that investors were a hair smarter this time, since instead of killing themselves, they were killing their brokers.

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Unlike '29, things bounced back fairly quickly then. Now the $ is below the Euro and falling rapidly -- anyone got "Whip Inflation Now" buttons left over from the Ford administration? I'm sure they'll work just as well now as they did then.

Here in Lou'ziana, we're voting on a pile of stuff tomorrow. We'll see if Eddie Haskell becomes our next governor in the first round, or if he'll have to go to a run off with either John Goodman, Matlock, or Mr. Spock with Stephen Colbert's face. (Eddie Haskell is running under the name "Bobby Jindal" as the Republican Whiz Kid. Is there anywhere outside of the Republican Party in Louisiana and maybe Mississippi where someone who has sycophantically supported everything the Bush adminstration has bungled and advocated teaching Creationism is talked about as supposedly being "very smart"?)