As Congress returns from its July 4th Recess today, and assumably resumes their debate on the Wall Street / Financial Reform legislation… (and, if they aren’t resuming it today, how about we label them the Second Biggest Loafers???)… following is a reminder from Great Depression I, of precisely who (apparently in both Depressions), The Biggest Loafer of Them All is.

In this Jay Norwood “Ding” Darling cartoon (which originally ran in the Des Moines Register, and was the next month reprinted in the September 1930 American Review of Reviews), Uncle Sam is shown as a cop, cornering a man dressed as a wealthy older gentleman, whom cartoonist Darling has labeled Bankers & Financiers. Sam/the cop points towards a bum sleeping on a bench, labeled Idle U.S. Money, and asks the banker, “Pardon me, but he’s one of your relations, isn’t he?”

In 1930, this would have referred to money being hoarded/hung on to, by banks and other financiers, afraid to lend it out because of the Depression. But from Uncle Sam’s point-of-view, lending that money is precisely what is needed to get the economy going again. I’d argue this cartoon is even more relevant in our current Depression, given that the U.S. government (Uncle Sam) bailed out & lent money to the major financial institutions, at bargain interest rates, for the intended purpose of having those institutions in turn lend it to businesses and consumers, to keep the economy going and help it recover. And those institutions that took the money, have for the most part simply sat on and hoarded it, rather than lending it out.

Implied also in Ding’s cartoon, is that it is playing upon, and turning back on its face, the familiar conservative narrative that those who are out of work, are idle loafers, too lazy to get a job (deliberately feigning ignorance of the simple fact that the jobs aren’t there to get — or, in the modern case, that self-same financiers have shipped the jobs overseas, and then can’t figure out why Americans don’t have the money to puchase their products). The older, conservative-caricatured gentleman, appears shocked to find the “Loafer” moniker applied to his activities, and being called The Biggest Loafer of Them All, to boot.

Click here to find prior Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons entries, and related I.T.C.H. posts. This series will continue, so long as the debate on Wall Street financial reforms continues in Congress (except on Mondays and holidays, during which I already had other material planned).

Doug Wheeler

financial reform