Bryan Rich, a member of the Weiss Research Institute, which regularly sends me free economic advice via the internet, writes this morning of three national economic waves- Panic, real, 18 months ago; Stabilization, uncertain, 12 months ago; and Pain & Cleansing, real, starting now. “It’s also a period that begins the healing of economies. And it’s driven by austerity. This means increased taxes, higher savings and a lower standard of living. In short, it’s a period of rebalancing and rebuilding.” Rich says.

I think he may be right, because my earliest economic memories, at five years of age in 1932, were of a similar period of national economic Pain & Cleansing. I did not realize it then as national economic cleansing or even as local pain. I just knew that I was helping my parents go out in the middle of the night to catch a few chickens from their hen house roost to take to Washington Court House, Ohio, the next day, to sell for a few dollars to pay the interest on our farm mortgage held by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. I did not feel any pain; it was kind of fun. My parents did not seem too worried either, my dad in the wake of Franklin Roosevelt’s landslide election and subsequent Bank Holiday, was singing a little song called, “Happy days are here again”. I wonder now, “What kind of days was this ditty heralding, the Roaring Twenties, like they were just before I was born or just that the Democrats were now back in office?”

However, either way, a new booming national economy did not come until credit began to flow in massive quantities after the end of World War II, some fifteen years later. In that time we knew frugality if not austerity, we paid our first income taxes, and achieved higher savings but not necessarily did we experience a lower standard of living. We had a wonderful life as we milked our cows, raised our hogs, gathered our eggs, tended our vegetable garden; and my sister and I graduated from our local college-- RJS, Feb. 13, 2010