Roundup: Historians' Take

Robert J. Shiller: Can Talk of a Depression Lead to One?

[Robert J. Shiller is professor of economics at Yale and chief economist at MacroMarkets LLC. He and George A. Akerlof are the authors of “Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism” (Princeton University Press).] PEOPLE everywhere are talking about the Great Depression, which followed the October 1929 stock market crash and lasted until the United States entered World War II. It is a vivid story of year upon year of despair.

Thomas Sugrue: Obama must rise to urban challenge

[THOMAS J. SUGRUE is Kahn Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of "Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North." ] For the first time in three decades, we have a president who has pledged to put urban and metropolitan issues at the forefront of the national political agenda. Given the current economic crisis, and its devastating impact on metro Detroit, it's not a moment too soon. For t

Lincoln Mitchell: Should President Obama Be More Optimistic?

[Mitchell is an Assistant Professor in the Practice of International Politics, Columbia University.] In the last few days voices as disparate as John McCain's speechwriter, Mark McKinnon, and former President Bill Clinton have suggested to President Obama that he put a more optimistic mien on his presidency. I suspect that Bill Clinton's advice is meant to be constructive and, other than contemplating the colossal chutzpah of anybody associated with John McCain telling anybody to be

Ismael Hossein-zadeh: How the Current Financial Rescue Schemes are Following Hoover's Failed Model

[Ismael Hossein-zadeh, author of the recently published The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism, teaches economics at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa.] Faced with the financial meltdown of the Great Depression, the Hoover administration created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation that poured taxpayers' money into the coffers of the influential Wall Street banks in an effort to save them from bankruptcy. Like today's Bush/Obama administrations, the Hoover administration used the"too

Robert Dallek: When the World Knocks at the White House Door

[Mr. Dallek is the author of biographies of JFK and LBJ and a history of Henry Kissinger's diplomacy.] At the start of his presidential term in 1913, Woodrow Wilson said prophetically, “It would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs.” Although he managed to win passage of major progressive reforms, including the Federal Reserve Act, his presidency was soon overwhelmed by problems abroad: first in Mexico, with American troops seizing the por

John Steele Gordon: Deficits are nothing new. It's the trend that should worry us.

[Mr. Gordon is the author of "Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt" (Walker, 1997).] When President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 into law yesterday, he was adding to what is already almost guaranteed to be the largest deficit in American history. In January, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the deficit this year would be $1.2 trillion before the stimulus package. That's more than

Ruth Rosen: What kind of economic stimulus do American women want?

[Ms. Rosen is Professor Emerita of History, U.C. Davis and Visiting Professor of History, U.C. Berkeley.] Ever since Barack Obama won the presidency, American women - battered by the George W Bush administration's assaults on their rights - have sensed the possibility of change and mobilised to make sure that the new president hear their voices and recognise their needs. No surprise here. During any great political transformation, women have almost always de

Sam Tanenhaus: Conservatism Is Dead

[Mr. Tanenhaus is the author of a biography of Whittaker Chambers and is the editor of the NYT Book Review.] In the tumultuous history of postwar American conservatism, defeats have often contained the seeds of future victory. In 1954, the movement's first national tribune, Senator Joseph McCarthy, was checkmated by the Eisenhower administration and then "condemned" by his Senate colleagues. But the episode, and the passions it aroused, led to the founding of National Revi

Tom Engelhardt: What Does Economic "Recovery" Mean on an Extreme Weather Planet?

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the American Age of Denial. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Ver

James Morone: Bipartisan fantasies

[James Morone is a professor of political science at Brown University.] “THIS is not a time for partisanship,” declared Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, when he accepted President Obama’s invitation to serve as commerce secretary. By last week, Mr. Gregg had changed his mind, citing “irreconcilable conflicts.” For historians, this outcome was predictable: Bipartisan dreams have been crashing into political reality from the earliest days of the Republic.

Kenneth Weisbrode: Why it's far too early to label the U.S. secretary of state a failure.

[Kenneth Weisbrode is the Vincent Wright fellow in history at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Italy.] Hillary Clinton's trip to Asia marks her first venture into the "vast external realm" as secretary of state. She is spending this week in Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, and China in order to give and gain what most likely will be salient first impressions. The trip already has been met with mixed commentary. The N

Julian Zelizer: Stakes are huge for Obama and nation

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is completing a book on the history of national security politics since World War II, to be published by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely on current events.] ... For several decades, starting in the 1930s with the New Deal, liberals argued the federal government should be the first responder in times of economic crisis. They made a series of arguments to support thei

William Astore: Is the U.S. Military Now an Imperial Police Force?

[William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), taught for six years at the Air Force Academy. He currently teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism (Potomac Press, 2005), among other works. He may be reached at wastore@pct.edu.] A leaner, meaner, higher tech force -- that was what George W. Bush and his Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld promised to transform the American mili

Kathy Olmsted: Why can't California pass a budget?

[Ms. Olmsted teaches history at UC Davis.] California’s lawmakers meet tonight to try to resolve the worst budget crisis in the state’s history. For more than six months, the majority Democrats and Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have tried to win the support of three Republicans in each house of the Legislature, which they need for the constitutionally mandated two-thirds vote to approve the budget. As a result, the California budget has been held hostage for more than half a year

Ron Radosh: Are We Really All Socialists Now?

[Ronald Radosh is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at The Hudson Institute.] The question of whether or not we are all socialists now is not as silly as it may sound. Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas argue in their cover story for Newsweek that the United States, though remaining a center-right nation culturally, is increasingly coming to resemble the European social-democratic welfare states. While conservatives blast the Obama Administrati

Arthur Herman: Jimmy Carter and the Camp David Myth

[Mr. Herman is the author of "Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age".] Will Jimmy Carter be President Barack Obama's role model on how to bring peace to the Middle East? Some, especially in Israel, view that prospect with apprehension. Others, like Ralph Nader, have greeted the possibility with enthusiasm, urging Mr. Obama to rely on Mr. Carter's "wise and seasoned counsel" in dealings with the volatile re

Andrew Delbanco: A New Day for Intellectuals

[Andrew Delbanco is a professor of humanities and director of American studies at Columbia University and a member of the board of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. His book College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be will be published by Princeton University Press in 2010.] Soon after election day, the columnist Nicholas D. Kristof wrote in The New York Times that the "second most remarkable thing" about the election was that "American voters have ju

Christopher Phelps: Which New Deal approaches are worth emulating?

[Christopher Phelps, associate professor of history at Ohio State University at Mansfield, has written extensively on intellectuals and politics in the 1930s. He is author of Young Sidney Hook (second edition, University of Michigan Press, 2005) and editor of Max Shachtman's 1933 text Race and Revolution (Verso, 2003).] His oratorical gifts draw comparisons with Martin Luther King Jr. His youthfulness and liberal centrism are reminiscent of John F. Kennedy. His hope is akin to Ronal

Andrew DeWit: Japan’s Twenty Year Response to Economic Crisis

[Andrew DeWit is Professor of the Political Economy of Public Finance, Rikkyo University and an Asia-Pacific Journal coordinator. With Kaneko Masaru, he is the coauthor of Global Financial Crisis published by Iwanami in 2008.] We have some good news, and we have some bad news.First the good news. A little common sense is breaking out both within and about Japan. Within Japan, an el

Mark Naison: A Crisis Grows in Brooklyn-Orgy of Luxury Building Will Produce Bank Failures

Anyone wanting to understand why America's banks are still in trouble need only spend a day driving or walking through the North Brooklyn neighborhoods of Park Slope, Dumbo, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Williamsburgh, Greenpoint and Bushwick. In these increasingly upscale neighborhoods, some of which, less than twenty years ago were considered "marginal" or even blighted, every available inch of vacant land is being filled with luxury condominium towers, most between four