Studs Terkel 's America: 'The Big Boys Are Not That Bright'

I ran across an  article about the late Studs Terkel from AARP magazine.  It features one of the last interviews  by the great American oral historian and activist  who died  this October , aged 96.  A frequent guest on television and radio programs, Mr. Terkel wrote two of the best books on 20th Century American history I've ever come across:  "The Good War" (1984) a Pulitzer Prize winning book about dozens of ordinary Americans telling the stories of their lives during the Second World War and "Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great  Depression".    

His final thoughts on collapsing economic conditions then and now,  recorded by Alan Horowitz, encapsulate for me an excellent contrast of the Great Depression and the latest financial panic calls out of New York and Washington for  taxpayer bailouts.  These calls for help come from those corporate hounchos who fought tooth and nail against regulation and financial transparency and fair-dealing.  They successfully neutered, through campaign contributions to both political parties agencies, the Securities and Exchange Commission.  They kept the hedge fund industry from being regulated altogether.  And much of the money from the mortgage crisis was lost because the people making those loans knew they wouldn't have to make the loans accountable to real market values and the consumers ability to pay and hold the properties. All this chicanery: and now we all reap the whirlwind.

 Now perhaps the  United States, after some thirty years of massive deregulation since the election of Ronald Reagan, can return to a mature regulated economy. I hope it is not too late.   This latest financial meltdown and the loss of so many fortunes through bad investments have made true believers out of a lot of folks who had been living off the notion that people in speculative businesses by nature are more knowledgeable and honest than the average Joe or Jane, and that personal greediness will make us all better off.   

The latest debacle in the news has been the world-wide Ponzi/Pyramid schemes of hedge fund titan  Bernard L Madoff, who bilked a reported 50 billion dollars out of investors.  He fooled some very bright people.  And no one paid attentio nto the early whistle blowers.  It was, as one columnist put it, only when the tide went out that people could see how many people were left swimming naked.    

It reminds us all that as individuals we can be fooled by the experts, many of whom are not as expert as the so-called ordinary person.  That's why we need regulation.  The Reagan Era is (at last) really and truly over. A balance might be restored (again, if it is not too late) between the desire of individuals to make money and the needs of the commonwealth to make sure they do it honestly. 

Mr. Terkel's remarks are below.          

 

"So here we are at a crossroads. In a strange way, I’m hopeful. Franklin D. Roosevelt sums up how I think about tomorrow. When asked a tough question once, he said, “That’s an iffy question.” I think if we don’t remember what happened in the past and if we don’t remember there was a way out, it’ll be an iffy question as to which way we go. During the Depression people believed that the man behind the desk was a better man. They’d think, “I’m here with hat in hand. He knows more than I do.” We’ll have less of that kind of thinking now because so many of us have been through the Civil Rights Movement and the ’60s. In the Depression they didn’t have that as a preface. We do. That’s the big change. We’ve seen what activism does.

"The Great Depression. I was about 17 years old. Hoover was still president. People had been living high off the hog. And then, boom, comes the Crash. It was so sudden. Guys jumped out of windows. They didn’t know what to do. The wise men ran around, and then they cried out after Roosevelt for the government to help them out. Regulation. They asked for it. They cried for it. The wise men were lost, just as they are today. The free market fell on its fanny. We learned nothing. It’s exactly the same today.

"My mother ran a hotel, the Wells-Grand Hotel, for men, just outside Chicago’s skid row. Skilled workers. Mechanics. Guys with jobs here and there. Some retired. It was fine. The lobby in the hotel was empty in the daytime. It was just a little room, and at night they’d come play hearts and pinochle. Then came 1929. Suddenly they’re not working. Or those guys who retired, suddenly their pensions are gone. Now they’re in the lobby in the daytime. They don’t know what the hell to do. So they drank more. And played the horses more. And there were fights. What were the fights over? Their own self-respect. I mean, they had nothing to do. They were furious. Who do you blame? Who do you hit? You hit each other. That was sort of a metaphor for what happened to the country. They blamed themselves. Yet I met these people who weathered it one way or the other, some just by lending a hand.

The lessons of the Great Depression? Don’t blame yourself. Turn to others. The big boys are not that bright.”

For a brief biography on Studs Terkel, check out this link: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAterkel.htm