In the 1930s, Americans still ate mostly local, seasonal food prepared in traditional fashion. That was all soon to change. The national highway system enabled goods to travel across country quickly. Refrigerators and freezers were becoming commonplace in ordinary homes. Madison Avenue found new advertising techniques to convince consumers to buy processed, packaged foods. Old traditions were dying out fast and the unique flavors of the different regions of the United States would soon find competition with the blander, more uniform flavors of chain restaurants.

The Work Projects Administration assigned writers to document local recipes and food customs from all over the United States in an effort to preserve a moment in history — as well as employ writers who would otherwise have starved during the Great Depression. The writings were to have been collected in a single volume called America Eats, but with World War II, the economy improved and writers no longer had to be dependent on the government for employment. The notes and essays sat in storage for many years. Mark Kurlansky, author of many acclaimed nonfiction books, including Cod and Salt, selected several of the writings from America Eats for the The Food of a Younger Land.

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I’m such a geek. This week, I’m headed to the legendary Red Rocks Park in Morrison, Colorado, for four sold-out nights of music from the Vermont-based band, Phish, at what is arguably one of the greatest outdoor music venues in the United States, if not the world. And I will, at some point or another, be thinking about the New Deal.

That’s right, in the middle of some twenty-minute swirling, epic jam, my mind will undoubtedly stray a little and wonder about the millions of unemployed Americans that were employed during and after the Great Depression building thousands of roads, bridges, post offices, schools, dams and, well, amazing places like Red Rocks.

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Are efforts to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide actually working, or is there something else going on here? The answer, according to an economist at Harvard, is the latter: The recession will cause a drop in carbon emissions simply because there won’t be as many industries, homes and vehicles spewing the greenhouse gas into the air.

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 Russia has raised tariffs and subsidies. The European Union claims that the “Buy American” proposal in the US stimulus plan violates WTO rules.

Under the Bush administration, the US imposed traffics on French cheese in retaliation for French health rules that restricted the sale of US chicken and beef. As Bush left office he was celebrated by the poultry industry for this retaliation. Such irrational lose-lose behavior is absurd, which is why it’s called “war.”

Until the recent slowdown, world trade was expanding and increasing world prosperity. According to Fareed Zakaria in his recent book, The Post-American World, “China’s growth alone has lifted more than 400 million people out of poverty. Poverty is falling in countries housing 80% of the worlds population.”

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Overstock.com chairman and CEO Patrick Byrne, says we are less than 50% of the way through the mess, he predicted the coming of this current crisis many times before, starting 3 years ago, Watch this montage to see Byrne’s predictions beginning in 2005:

Dr. Patrick Byrne has learned at the knee of Warren Buffett, the greatest investor of all time.  As a child Byrne’s parents would allow him skip school so he could spend time and get an education from the “Oracle of Omaha.” Byrne founded Overstock in 1999, and in 2007 the company generated nearly a billion dollars in revenue.

Today Byrne is suggesting one of the following scenarios could occur in the coming years:

• Reagan Recession:  A deep retraction reminiscent of the recession under Reagan in the early 80’s.
• The Lost Decade:  A protracted recession similar to the one suffered by Japan in the 90’s.
• Great Depression: A severe economic dip on par with the Great American Depression in the early 30’s.
• Mad Max:  Not likely, but still possible, a catastrophic breakdown of society with mass shortages of energy, food, and water.

Which way do you think the economy is going? What does this mean for sustainable economics?

Economic Populism appears to be back in vogue. Given the fall of Lehman Brothers and the Wall Street machine, the economic banter clearly seems to be “the people” versus “the elites.

Economic populism involves an economic philosophy urging social and political system changes. In the current political and economic climate, the public concern over the inequity of wealth appears to be at a peak. There is a growing call by Senator Barack Obama and democrats to raise taxes on the wealthy to shrink the wealth gap. But is it true that the rich are getting richer? Or are the rich actually in danger of losing a significant portion of the nation’s wealth? Are the democrats worried about a problem that’s already being fixed by the markets?

Emmanuel Saez, the income-share expert and economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley told Robert Frank of the Wall Street Journal that during the Great Depression, the income and wealth of the top 1% of society fell drastically. (Read here for the full story). If history is to be believed then this will happen again especially if Obama becomes president.

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The government’s latest bailout news involves a plan to make the biggest intervention in the financial markets since the 1930s. Central to this plan would be a mechanism to bad assets off the balance sheets of financial companies or instead perhaps to create a federal insurance for investors in the money market funds. Additionally, the Securities and Exchange Commission is getting ready to propose a temporary ban on short selling financial stocks.

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So far, $200bn has been spent saving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with another $300bn to prop up the Federal Housing Administration.

On top of that, there’s with an additional $69bn to buy up the companies’ discount notes, $29bn to keep Bear Sterns alive and $85bn to keep AIG going. That’s another $183bn, taking the running total to $683bn.

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