On May Day, “the other workers’ holiday,” some public-spirited programming suggestions for the incoming Boston attraction
Occupied Southie – Last month, Massachusetts residents got the news that Boston’s “Seaport District” will soon be home to a new museum—a Smithsonian affiliate, no less. Part of the much-ballyhooed Commonwealth Pier (a.k.a. the old Seaport World Trade Center) being developed by Fidelity’s real estate arm Pembroke at a MassPort-owned site. And since big developments always include set-asides for cultural and civic spaces, one would assume that locals and tourists might be treated to another art museum or something like the Boston general history museum that the city surprisingly still lacks.
But no. In the old Yankee tradition of powerful capitalists doing whatever the hell they want, Fidelity decided to give us a new attraction literally nobody asked for: the Museum of American Finance. Its original New York location inundated by an obvious act of a wrathful yet merciful God in a flood (from a super Biblical burst heating pipe that happily didn’t harm anyone) in 2018, the Temple of Mammon in question has been casting about the US for a new site for several years and was finally presented with a perfect location here in the Hub. Which is, lest we forget, the home of the Ponzi Scheme.
Since I’m writing this installment on May Day, the international workers’ holiday—started in Chicago in 1886 when the nascent American labor movement briefly had a real chance of making the US a “cooperative commonwealth,” as early socialist and anarchist union leaders called for at the time, instead of the neoliberal hellscape we now, um, enjoy—and since this finance museum business seems to be a typical corporate fait accompli, it seems appropriate to suggest a series of 10 exhibits that would be great to see mounted there in the coming years. Each covering one of the worst economic collapses caused by greedy, sociopathic financiers of precisely the type the Museum of American Finance seeks to valorize. All 10 of which brought misery to millions of working people throughout most of the history of our republic.
And please note: Since the deregulation of the finance industry began under President Richard Nixon in the 1970s, four of the following 10 economic crises have occurred … with more recessions and depressions clearly on the way soon if we can’t reign in corporate power and build a more democratic society in the years to come.
Here are my recommended exhibit subjects. To be presented in all cases from the perspective of working people, not wealthy bankers and investors:
1. Panic of 1796-1797
Caused by a “land speculation bubble.”
2. Panic of 1837 (Western Land Panic)
Caused by “speculative lending practices” in the then-West, a collapsing land bubble, and other factors. Led to a major depression until the 1840s.
3. Panic of 1873 (The Great Depression … first try)
Caused by “rampant speculative investments (overwhelmingly in railroads)” and other factors. A very international crisis. Lasted until 1879 in the US.
4. Panic of 1893 (Gold Panic)
Caused by another railroad stock bubble and, interestingly given the Trump administration’s geopolitical strategy of the moment, tariffs enacted by the McKinley administration in 1890, plus an array of other factors. Ended within the year but led directly to another financial panic in 1896.
5. Panic of 1907 (1907 Bankers’ Panic or Knickerbocker Crisis)
Caused by a scheme to “corner the market on stock of the United Copper Company,” followed by banks who had lent to the scheme suffering runs that spread to other banks and trusts. Reforms in its aftermath led to the creation of the Federal Reserve system.
6. The Great Depression … second try (1929-1939)
Caused by massive stock speculation using the profit of the preceding “Roaring Twenties” economic boom period. Global in scope. Led to significant regulation of financial institutions in the public interest under FDR’s administration.
7. Savings and Loan Crisis (1980s–1990s)
Caused by investors using small savings and loan institutions for speculative purposes for which they had not been designed—enabled by the beginning of deregulation of US financial institutions the previous decade. Led to the collapse of about one-third of US savings and loan “thrifts.”
8. Black Monday (1987 Stock Market Crash)
Caused by fears of overvalued stocks and other factors. “[M]ay have been accelerated by portfolio insurance hedging (using computer-based models to buy or sell index futures in various stock market conditions).”
9. Dot-Com Bubble (2000)
Caused by a tech market stock bubble. Basically led to the rise of some of the rapacious tech giants of today, notably Amazon, Alphabet (Google), eBay, and Nvidia—and the rising power of the billionaires that own them.
10. The Financial Crisis of 2007–2008 (The Great Recession)
“The causes of the 2008 crisis included predatory lending in the form of subprime mortgages and a resulting US housing bubble, excessive risk-taking by global financial institutions, and lack of regulatory oversight.” So-called “shadow banks” also played a large role, an issue I covered in part 2 of my “GE Boston Deal” series in this column. With massive bailouts to many of the huge corporations that caused the crisis and basically nothing for the vast numbers of people ruined by a crisis that has never really ended for them.
Apparent Horizon—an award-winning political column—is syndicated by the MassWire news service of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism.
