Marguerite “Missy” LeHand (1898–1944) was born to an Irish family in Potsdam, New York. During her childhood the family moved to Massachusetts, settling into the small working-class town of Somerville just outside of Boston. It was here that she contracted rheumatic fever at the age of 15. She was lucky to survive the illness, as…

The latest GDP report showed the U.S. economy grew by a faster-than-expected pace in the fourth quarter of 2022, but that likely overstates America’s economic health as a measure of domestic demand slowed to a crawl, while one key data point buried deep in the report was the worst since the Great Depression. The U.S. economy expanded…

The latest GDP report showed the U.S. economy grew by a faster-than-expected pace in the fourth quarter of 2022, but that likely overstates America’s economic health as a measure of domestic demand slowed to a crawl, while one key data point buried deep in the report was the worst since the Great Depression. The U.S. economy expanded…

Commentary It is a relief that the U.S. Federal Reserve Board is not veering off into climate theology or other mission-irrelevant distractions. While recent comments of the Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell, were unequivocal, comments from the Bank of Canada have not been as definitive. Amelioration of real or perceived non-economic matters, such as largely social…

I have long admired the writing and fastidious research of historian David Pietrusza, but “Roosevelt Sweeps Nation: FDR’s 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal” is his magnum opus, at least to date. Much more so than other Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) biographies, Pietrusza’s incredible enquiries and presentations of dialogue from the mid-1930s…

Commentary  Consumer prices were becoming exceptionally high, and policymakers at the Federal Reserve became increasingly worried they were falling behind. Having been forced into buying U.S. Treasurys—a lot of USTs—policymakers wanted to scrap the bond purchases and reverse course before it got to be too late, fearing the resulting overabundance of bank reserves. While this…

I was born in 1929 in an industrial blue-collar city called Holyoke in Massachusetts. It was the year when the stock market crashed. Welcome to the Great Depression. The Worst of Times Of course, the early ’30s was when massive unemployment took place and the Depression really hit. My father had a meat and grocery…

The majority of American voters believe a 1930s-like Great Depression is on the way, according to a new survey by Rasmussen Reports published on Sept. 28. The telephone and online survey was conducted on Sept. 22 and 25 among 1,000 American adults and has a margin of sampling error of +/- 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level…

If you take a hard look at your grocery bill, you’re probably a little unnerved these days. While the cost of just about everything has increased over the past several months, food costs have skyrocketed. Food inflation has accelerated for more than a year, by whopping 10 percent in the most recent calculations. That’s a…

As readers know, citizens in the United States—and for that matter, most of the world—are getting pummeled in the wallet right now. Gas prices are through the roof. Rents in many cities are soaring. The cost of groceries jumps every few days, and our president recently warned that we may experience food shortages. Unlike other…