Jungle Rhythm

The period around the Great Depression is of interest.

The stock market crash began on October 24, 1929. October 29, 1929 is called 'Black Tuesday.' The stock market lost $16 billion in value during October of 1929. That amount was huge at the time. Now its merely a few months cost for the Iraq occupation.

I've been looking at cartoons that were made around that time to see if they reveal anything about that period of economic upheaval. How was the mood and feeling tone of the country expressed.

I'm looking at this to see if there are any familiar signs or correlations to our present period. We are not in a parallel economic situation. We have our own particular problems and there is the possibility of further degradation that could create that greater sense of recession moving into depression. If we asked the people who had invested their retirement in Bear Sterns, they might say a depression is already here.

The stock market has lost billions in value if not trillions, homes have lost trillions in value, there is an overproduction of paper money - printed to ease, we are in a war which is sapping billions each month, there is high unemployment, debt levels are off the charts, and there are many more problems.

This Mickey Mouse cartoon was released on November 15, 1929. That would be a few weeks after the stock market crash of October.