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May 20, 2013

Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?

Hannan Adely: Town raises Palestinian flag at City Hall

Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Morgan Housel: When smart investors do stupid things

Sharon Saloman, M.S., R.D.: Hunger games: Eat more, weigh less, without starving

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star

The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation

David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church

Emily Alpert: Recession dragged down birth rates for less-educated women
Morgan Housel: The deep downside of home ownership

Peter Teffer: Will Dutch police soon be stalking cybercriminals on your computer?

Heidi McIndoo, M.S., R.D.: Meatless 'meat' can have its own set of problems

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Celebrate! This must-try appetizer is delicate yet has depth of flavor: Corn-Leek Cakes with Caviar, Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche

May 10, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be

Caroline B. Glick: The dirty little secret about Israel's Arabs

Mona Charen: Hawking's Moral Calculus: The man and the movement he embraces
Morgan Housel: The biggest retirement myth ever told

Sandi Doughton: Eyes may provide new insight into brain problems

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : The Great Gatsby's Jewish Ties; Jews in the "Time 100 list" List; People's Most Beautiful Women

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: A sweet-hot meal: Pear salsa spices up salmon

May 8, 2013

Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas

Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate

Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
Amanda Paulson: Study reveals sad truths about community colleges

Harvard Health Letters: Evidence weak that zinc, echinacea are beneficial

The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility

May 6, 2013

Edmund Sanders and Patrick J. McDonnell: Think Israel's objective in Syria is to weaken Assad or embolden the rebels? Think again

Brian Bennett: Israeli airstrikes may show weakness in Syrian defense

Michael Ollove: Millions of ex-felons, parolees and those on probation are about to be entitled to tax-payer paid health coverage
Karen Kaplan: Most men can skip PSA test for prostate cancer, urologists say

Kimberly Lankford: How to track down a lost life insurance policy

Dream of Mars exploration achievable, experts say

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan M. Selasky: EGGPLANT WRAPS are an easy, sumptuous and scrumptious meal

May 3, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Human Courage and the Unavoidable, Disturbing Text

Steven Emerson: Attorney General Fights CAIR in Court, Lauds it in Public

Mediterranean diet helps beat dementia: study
Harvard Health Letters: When to be screened for a hearing problem

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Iron Man's Jewish Connections; Marc Maron's New TV Show; Martin Landau Grows Up with Israel; Shalom, Allan Arbus

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: A sweet surprise for Mother's Day dessert

May 1, 2013

Jonathan Rosenblum: An Improbable Journey to Orthodoxy

Jonathan Tobin: Blame Obama, Not Israel for Syria Push

Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Halena M. Gazelka, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: What you need to know about implanted pain relief devices

Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine

Jessica Shugart: When it comes to math, MRIs may be better than IQs

The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: The celebrated chef on how high-maintenance ASPARAGUS RISOTTO need not be

April 29, 2013

Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust

Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?

Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Morgan Housel: He's rich, smart and old: Listen to him

Thomas Salinas, D.D.S.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: The safety of amalgam fillings

Harvard Health Letters: Tomatoes and stroke protection

Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Swing into spring with lemon cream pie

April 26, 2013

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The world is a mirror

Caroline B. Glick: Time to confront Obama

Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Kimberly Lankford: New strategies ease pain of paying for long-term care insurance

Howard LeWine, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Too much ibuprofen?

Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jewish Major Leaguers, 2013; New Movies and Comedy Show; Shalom, 'Lumpy' (Leave it to Beaver)

The Kosher Gourmet by Emily Ho : A bright and cheerful salad to herald the warmer months ahead

April 24, 2013

Steven Emerson: Boston Bomber Exposes Islamist Secret

Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
Harvard Health Letters: Can you get headaches from headache medication?

Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D.: How to easily get more Omega-3s in your diet

Melissa Healy: Pot in a pill: All the pain relief without the smoke

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: Chipotle Chili Butternut Squash Soup is bold, zesty, hot

April 22, 2013

Ken Dilanian: Counterterrorism's future is unclear

US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer

P.J. Skerrett, M.D.: How to recognize a good whole grain product

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Teen actor Jonah Bobo in New Flick: Hunky James Wolk on Mad Men; Erich Segal's Daughter Writes Prize-Winning Jewish Novel


Jewish World Review Oct. 20, 2008 / 21 Tishrei 5769

Hold the hysteria

By Paul Greenberg


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | "The most interesting aspect of the recent Wall Street coverage," at least to Florence King, the grande dame and just plain grand old dame of America-watching, is the resurrection of the word Depression, which once upon a time no one dared utter. Euphemisms like correction, recession and downturn were favored instead. Now, she notes, the D-word is back in style, "wearing its de rigueur initial cap to differentiate it from mere sadness." As an economic and historical term, Depression has the ring of a medical diagnosis. A fatal one.


With the slow fading of the Depression generation, along with knowledge of our own history, Americans toss around comparisons with the Depression with the abandonment of a broker jumping out of an upper-story window. To restore some perspective, as opposed to the manic-depressive shifts of the markets, it might help to look at the calendar and confirm that this is not the 1930s:


On July 9, 1932, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day at 41.63 — a loss of 91 percent since the Year of the Crash, 1929.


In that same three-year period, banks had been shutting their doors all over the country. In 1929, a total of 659 banks with a combined capital of $250 million went under; in 1930, 1,352 banks worth $853 million; in 1931, 2,294 with aggregate deposits of close to $2 billion.


The railroads, then the country's prime means of moving passengers and freight, ground to a halt, laying off workers by the hundreds of thousands, and letting equipment rust because there wasn't money to replace it.


By the last quarter of 1930, industrial production was down by half of the previous year's. The next year, 1931, industrial employment was down by more than a third. Wages, at least those that were still being paid, plummeted. By the time Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4, 1933, one in four Americans was out of a job.


Whatever the country and the world is facing today, it's not the capital-D Depression of the 1930s. Not that you'd know it by reading the current book of lamentations that suffices for so much economic analysis, but the country's gross domestic product actually rose by 2.7 percent over the past five quarters, productivity is still on a roll thanks to ever leaping technological innovations, consumer loans outside the mortgage market are actually up 5 percent year over year, commercial loans 9 percent. To those with good credit, 30-year mortgage loans at 6 or 6 1/2 percent should be readily available.


You call this a Depression? About the only thing this Panic of '08 has in common with 1932 is a loss of faith. Once again the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance," to quote Franklin D. Roosevelt's first inaugural address.


Throughout his first two terms, FDR did something even more important than acting: He appeared to act. If one policy didn't work, he tried another. Much as this administration's firm of Paulson and Bernanke are doing now. Barack Obama might describe such jumps back and forth as "erratic," the way he does John McCain's ever developing economic policies. But FDR, now one of the Democratic Party's patron saints, believed in "bold experimentation," which kept hope alive. And hope is the essence of credit.


Undeterred by attacks from the do-nothing right, which were balanced by separate but equally ferocious attacks from the do-everything left, the new president followed his own directionless course, swerving left and right like some agile bicyclist weaving through an impossible traffic tie-up, avoiding the crashes all around him, his only aim to keep his equilibrium and restore the country's. In the end, FDR didn't destroy the free market but saved it, which George W. Bush said this week was the object of his administration's latest buy-out, this time of key banks.


Franklin Roosevelt was no intellectual, thank goodness. He was more interested in practice than theory. As a presidential aide once said of FDR, he may have had only a second-class intellect, but he had a first-class temperament. Adventuresome, inspiring, congenial, supremely confident, he was the ultimate Happy Warrior, a term he coined for Al Smith.


There's a name for what FDR had and today's doomsayers don't: faith. Which is a curious lack in a country that has come through so much history, and will come through the Panic of '08, too.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.

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