2003

2008

The Astonisher.com Free (Thought) Banner at the top ran in July 2003, nearly four years before the American sub-prime mortgage meltdown began the descent into the economic maelstrom.

We ran it as a prediction for years ("Coming soon!") when the expensive suits were still denying the U.S. was in a recession, and then we announced the fact when the expensive suits were still denying the U.S. was in a depression, a delusional condition that amazingly persisted into 2011.

I believe this is the first published prediction of the ultimate outcome of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan's catastrophic deregulation of the American economy. How did Astonisher.com know all this bad mojo was coming way back in 2003? Well, I can tell you we didn't use an Ouija board or consult the Institute of Supply Management.

All we really had to do was read John Kenneth Galbraith's treatment of the Crash of '29, The Great Crash: 1929 -- especially his incisive discussion of the effects of leverage -- and Thomas Paine's classic pamphlet on the debt bankruptcy of governments, Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance, written in Paris in 1796.

If American history teaches us anything, it is that an unregulated, easy-money boom that is presided over by pious, dim-witted, "free market" Republicans will be followed by a crash -- pretty much in direct proportion to the size of the initial speculative bubble. Ergo, "The Great George W. Bush Depression."

2010