Posted on 06/28/2002 3:55:08 AM PDT by TightSqueeze
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:07:55 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
During the late 1990s, Robert Shiller, an economics professor at Yale University and an expert on market volatility, studied the dynamics of an economic bubble as the tech-fueled boom took the financial markets to unprecedented heights. Now Shiller is seeing some of those same dynamics at work, but heading in the opposite direction.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Don't look now but Xerox is the next in a long line of companies that will now have to restate earnings.
Lets see if those wild and wonderful dip buyers were right yesterday, hang on, we may end up miles from here!
"The Decade of Fraud(s)..."
First these corporations betrayed their workers by moving plants out of this country. Now that the 90's are over we find out they betrayed their stockholders with dotbombs, accounting shenanigans and fraudulent earnings reports. Same as Bill Clinton betrayed this nation to China and in other traitorous actions.
When the boss is a crook, the underlings are a lot more likely to see how far they can push the envelope of honesty.
Gay Nineties was the period of the 1890's in United States history. Many Americans prospered during those years. But the period included a nationwide depression, much labor unrest, and the Spanish-American War (1898). Largely as a result of these events, few Americans in the 1890's ever regarded the period as gay or lively. The term Gay Nineties became widely used during the Great Depression, the worldwide business slump of the 1930's. At that time, people longed for a comfortable past and chose to remember only the prosperous years and heroic events of the 1890's. Many Americans preferred to recall the gleaming white buildings and the marvelous new Ferris wheel of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Others remembered Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt leading his Rough Rider Regiment against the Spaniards in Cuba three years before he became the nation's 26th president (see Roosevelt, Theodore [The Rough Riders]). Still others thought of the charming gas lights and lively vaudeville shows of the 1890's.
Life during the Gay Nineties
The privileges of wealth. In the 1890's about an eighth of the families in the United States controlled about seven-eighths of the nation's income. The wealthy included more than 4,000 millionaires, most of whom had gained their fortune in banking, mining, manufacturing, trade, or transportation.
Wealthy Americans traveled by ocean liner to many parts of the world. Some collected rare books or valuable art objects. The wealthy supported symphony orchestras and operas in Boston, Chicago, New York City, and other large cities. They sent their children to such exclusive colleges as Harvard and Vassar.
Wealthy families lived in elegant mansions or town houses, and many spent the summer in spacious cottages. They furnished their homes with heavily ornamented furniture of the Victorian style. These families often entertained with lavish dinners and parties. Fashionable young women of the 1890's dressed in the Gibson Girl style created by the American artist Charles Dana Gibson (see [picture]).
The rich often spent leisure time watching horse races, yachting, or playing golf and polo. College men competed in football, rowing, and track. Sports for college women included archery, croquet, and tennis.
Middle-class prosperity. The middle class in America during the 1890's included attorneys, physicians, and other professionals; small-business owners; and skilled workers. Most of them lived in their own homes. Others rented apartments. Like the wealthy, they furnished their homes with Victorian furniture. But they had a Persian rug or statuettes instead of expensive art objects.
Some middle-class children went to work after finishing elementary school. But most continued their education at a private or public high school. Only a small number of these children could afford to go to college.
Many people enjoyed plays given by touring theater groups. Leading performers included Maude Adams, John Drew, and Lillian Russell. Popular plays, such as The Count of Monte Cristo and Cyrano de Bergerac, thrilled audiences across the nation. Outdoor entertainment included professional baseball games, Sunday school picnics, and bicycle rides.
Most middle-class people read daily newspapers and such magazines as Cosmopolitan, McClure's, and Munsey's. Adults also enjoyed such novels as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Red Badge of Courage. Parents encouraged their children to read Horatio Alger's stories, which stressed the virtues of hard work and honesty, as well as luck. Many children secretly read dime novels, adventure stories that cost 10 cents. Many homes had a piano or a phonograph. Popular music included "On the Banks of the Wabash," "Maple Leaf Rag," and marches by John Philip Sousa.
The despair of poverty. Most of the nation's urban poor of the 1890's were unskilled laborers. Many were immigrants who spoke little or no English and who worked about 60 hours a week for less than $10. Millions of unskilled workers lost their jobs during a depression that hit the nation in 1893 and lasted until about 1897. About a fifth of the country's industrial workers had no job during this period, and life became almost unbearable for many of them. Millions of the urban poor lived in crowded tenements that had poor lighting and ventilation. Fire and disease—especially tuberculosis—killed many people. Poor city children left school at an early age, and few attended high school.
Large numbers of rural poor lived in shacks that lacked running water. These people often suffered from disease and had monotonous diets. Rural workers earned only about half the pay that city workers received. Rural children attended one-room schools.
The life of the rural poor was eased by an occasional Saturday night in town and by an annual county fair. In the cities, people could go to a vaudeville show, a baseball game, or a boxing match. Such boxing champions as "Gentleman Jim" Corbett and John L. Sullivan became national heroes.
Economic and political developments
Industrial growth occurred rapidly during the 1890's, except in the depression years. Many large companies bought up smaller ones, and monopolies became common in oil refining and other important industries. The growing power of industrial firms led workers to increase their attempts to organize unions.
Several bloody labor disputes during the 1890's hurt the union movement. In 1892, a strike at the Carnegie Steel Company plant near Homestead, Pennsylvania, resulted in several deaths. In 1894, federal troops helped end violence during a strike by railroad workers against the Pullman Company in Chicago. In spite of these setbacks, labor unions gained strength in the prosperous years at the end of the decade.
New types of mechanized equipment enabled farmers to increase production greatly during the 1890's. But the farmers produced more crops than they could sell. Prices fell, and farmers could not earn enough money to pay for their new machines. Many of them gave up and moved to the cities. During the early 1890's, some dissatisfied farmers founded the Populist Party and demanded many economic and political reforms. Above all, the Populists called for unlimited coinage of silver. They believed the so-called free silver would raise farm prices by increasing the amount of money in circulation. In 1896, the Democratic presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan, campaigned for free silver. He lost to Republican William McKinley.
In the mid-1890's, a number of members of Congress believed high import tariffs would help the slumping U.S. economy by reducing competition from products made abroad. In 1897, Congress passed the Dingley Act. It raised tariffs to record levels. People in business and farmers soon began to prosper again.
A growing world power. By 1890, all the chief frontier areas of the United States had been settled. But many Americans wanted the nation to expand further and become a world power. The nation largely accomplished this goal in the Spanish-American War. In February 1898, the battleship U.S.S. Maine blew up in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. The actual cause of the explosion was never learned. But most Americans blamed Spain, which ruled Cuba at the time. The United States declared war on Spain in April. American forces defeated the Spaniards in battles in Cuba and the Philippines, which Spain also ruled. Spain asked for peace in August. It granted independence to Cuba and gave Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico to the United States.
Also in 1898, the United States annexed the Hawaiian Islands. In 1899, Filipinos revolted against American forces because the United States had no plan to grant immediate independence to the Philippines.
Rising prosperity and victory in the Spanish-American War unified America during the late 1890's. Most Americans looked forward to the new century with optimism. But many felt uneasy about the nation's growing involvement in foreign affairs.
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Contributor:
• Ari Hoogenboom, Ph.D., Professor of History, City University of New York Brooklyn College.
How to cite this article. To cite this article in a footnote, Discovery School recommends the following format:
Ari Hoogenboom, "Gay Nineties," Discovery Channel School, original content provided by World Book Online,
http://www.discoveryschool.com/homeworkhelp/ worldbook/atozhistory/g/218990.html, Today's date here.
As cruel as it might sound- labor is a commodity just like raw materials. If a company or corporation can get it cheaper somewhere else, that's just what they're going to do. Unions and taxes make labor more expensive to a company. If corporations were given tax exempt status or drastically lower taxes, they could afford expensive American labor.
Blame the gov't. Blame the unions. Don't blame the corporations for trying to turn a profit. That is what I and everyone else, as a shareholder(s), demand that they do. That's the way the free market works.
If American labor wants to compete with the greater international labor market, they're going to have to ask themselves what they need to do to make that happen. It's just like anything else. If people buy Hondas and Toyotas because they're cheaper and better cars, Ford is going to have to compete with those guys and do the things necessary to do so. Labor is no different. If the working man doesn't like it, he needs to vote those big spenders like Ted Kennedy out of office. If labor unions don't like it, they can quit supporting social democratic candidates. It's a good thing when corporations leave. They're just pointing out quite graphically that you can't have your cake and eat it too. This is how progress works.
Don’t I know, back in ’98 I was a consultant in their headquarters on Park Ave. Xerox was a place where everyone worked behind closed doors and communicated as little as possible. It was around Thanksgiving and the place couldn’t have been gloomier, should have sold them short then. Live and learn.
Dollar is going down because foreign investors are spooked by accounting fraud in our major corporations. This fraud is a blow to US prestige and image. You can only foist off trade deficits on foreigners (read suckers) when your nation has a better image. BTW a dirty nuke explosion would also tarnish the image of a powerful United States and force the dollar down .... Boy would the Euros like this.
That is exactly what is happening, like a hole in the bottom of a bucket, slowly draining, unnoticed, until there isn’t much left. I believe a far better indicator of when we have finally reached bottom will be pronounced silence. The market will once again be back-page news, CNBC will be on for an hour or two a day, instead of 24 hours, and mutual funds will have all gone the way of the dodo.
You'll get flamed for that. There are two conservative camps here on FR. One is a group of Randian absolutists who believe that American companies should go wherever the labor is cheapest. This side makes a valid argument that if the government's regulations become too onerous, they should pull a John Galt and move to the Bahamas.
On the other side are the America Firsters who believe that since America is protecting these companies, the companies have a duty to keep Americans employed. They make a valid point in that if Americans keep losing their jobs to the third world, there will be no more Americans to purchase their products and America itself will descend to secord world status.
The events of the last decade have drawn me away from the Randians and dangerously close to thinking that Buchanan isn't a complete nutburger. (wow, did I really say that?)
Labor is not a commodity like raw materials since it has the ability not only to price itself, but also to use the proceeds received for wages earned, to speculate in the free market on the management that employs it.
Yes, for a long time the corporations had it all their own way, controlling all aspects because they were able to deliver both high capital returns and earnings. If that is no longer possible, corporations will have to compete for operating capital. Labor would be wise to invest in companies that provide both earnings and a market for their skills and shun corporations that would trade their labor market for trumped up earnings that never really existed.
I agree. The 1990's will make the 1920's look like a religious revival.
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