Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Moody's Moody Warning

Moody’s warns of 'social unrest’ as sovereign debt spirals

In a sombre report on the outlook for next year, the credit rating agency raised the prospect that future tax rises and spending cuts could trigger social unrest in a range of countries from the developing to the developed world.

6 comments:

EconomicDisconnect said...

Mark,
I think during the Great Depression they paid milk farms to dump it onto the ground. Besides smelling awful, think of the wonderful example it set up: work less; make more!

Stagflationary Mark said...

GYSC,

Thanks for showing me why I do this blog. I was inspired to look for what you just wrote and this is what I found. It's a really interesting read.

The Great Depression Hits Farms and Cities in the 1930s

http://www.iptv.org/IowaPathways/myPath.cfm?ounid=ob_000064

In other areas around the state, farmers banded together like a labor union and threatened to prevent any milk from getting from farms to towns and cities. They hoped that this would raise the price that farmers were paid for their products. They set up blockades on country roads and made any trucks carrying milk, cream, butter or other farm products to turn around and go back home. They called it “The Farm Strike.” Not all farmers joined the movement, however, and the effort did not have any effect on prices.

EconomicDisconnect said...

Wow, great find Mark. I remember a Time Life magazine picture of the event. I may have been wrong and perhaps the government did not pay them.

More from Iowa Milk Blockade:
http://www.ameshistoricalsociety.org/exhibits/depression.htm

I agree, great discussion is why I write as well.

Stagflationary Mark said...

GYSC,

From your link...

Let's call a Farmers' Holiday
A Holiday let's hold
We'll eat our wheat and ham and eggs
And let them eat their gold.


No wonder Moody's is moody. Yikes!

Anonymous said...

While in the great depression they were dumping staples, in today's whatever you call it they are dumping discretionary stuff.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Discretionary first, then staples?