commentary

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there — Leslie Poles Hartley. Actually I never read the novel this prescient quote is attributed to, The Go-Between (1953). But with the recent death of Harold Pinter, who wrote the screenplay for the 1971 film adaptation, I've been sifting through fragments of language that resonate across time. Seems like a lot of people want to go back in time. Who would have thought we would be debating the merits of The New Deal nearly a hundred years after the The Great Depression. (Whose idea was it to call the Depression "Great" by the way?)

As inconvenient truths go, unfortunately when all of the economic stimulus plans and protectionist plans of the 1930s failed to turn around the most significant worldwide economic depression to date, the worldwide war economy — yeah, that one, World War Two, rather conveniently "happened" in 1939 and all of a sudden everyone was back at work. Sure do hope that today's economic stimulus plans and protectionist plans don't fail; you never know what can happen. Just a thought.

Then again, lots of people want to live in the future; they're saving other peoples' money for a rainy day or a nuclear winter, whichever comes first. What's your pleasure; hot or cold? In any case, money is not money unless you spend it. Like blood, it has to circulate or it's useless. The more you save, the more you lose. Where's that "irrational exuberance" when we really need it?

Yes, the world is changing; no, nothing's changed at all. The past is a foreign country — How does that go again?

M. Brendon MacInnis
Publisher