This Is Not 1929, And That’s Exactly Why We Should Pay Attention

Today is Memorial Day.

I’m reflecting on the service members who gave their lives for America, whether on the battlefield or from wounds they carried home. I’m also praying for the Gold Star families who continue carrying the powerful legacy of those we honor today.

Days like this should make us grateful.

They should also make us serious.

A country built on such sacrifice shouldn’t drift into complacency. We owe the fallen more than just a ceremony; we owe them stewardship.

That is why I have been thinking about 1929.

Not because I believe America is relieving it. We are not. The economy, the monetary system, and the tools available to policymakers are different. Technology has changed almost everything about how markets, information, and capital move.

But human nature hasn’t changed as much as we’d like to think.

Before major crises, societies often developed a dangerous confidence that the old rules no longer apply. In the 1920s, modern industry, consumer credit, automobiles, radio, and electrification helped foster the belief that prosperity had entered a new era. Today, artificial intelligence, automation, financial engineering, mega-cap technology, and policy intervention can create similar temptations.

Every age has its miracle.

The danger begins when a miracle becomes permission.

That’s where valuation pressure matters. High stock prices don’t guarantee a collapse. Elevated P/E ratios don’t tell us exactly when the consequences will arrive. But they indicate how much confidence has already been priced in. When markets assume near-perfect execution, disappointment has less room to land softly.

Hidden leverage also matters.

Crises often expose risks that are technically visible but emotionally ignored. In 1987, market structure and portfolio insurance turned selling pressure into panic. In 2008, housing speculation, securitization, leverage, and bad incentives transformed weakness into systemic failure. The thing that breaks is often not invisible; it’s just inconvenient to face.

There is another problem now.

For years, America has used the escape hatch of borrowing its way through crisis. When pain arrived, Washington softened the blow with spending, stimulus, liquidity, guarantees, bailouts, deficits, and other emergency facilities. Sometimes that may have been necessary. But repeated often enough becomes a habit.

The trouble with an escape hatch is that it only works if it has not already been overused.

If another major crisis arrived today, how much room would we really have to maneuver? How much more could we borrow before the cure itself became part of the disease?

In many ways, we have mortgaged the future for the present. And if the next downturn comes, our children may discover that we did not merely leave them debt. We left them fewer ways out.

Then there’s the kitchen-table economy.

A country can look strong on paper while ordinary families feel squeezed by the costs of groceries, housing, insurance, energy, healthcare, and childcare. That gap matters. A nation becomes fragile when the official economy and the lived economy no longer align.

And eventually, economics becomes civic.

Trust may not cause every crisis, but once trust is damaged, every crisis becomes harder to manage. The Great Depression didn’t start because Americans suddenly stopped trusting institutions. But once banks failed, policies faltered, and hardship spread, the crisis became more than financial; it became national.

That’s the lesson worth carrying forward.

America doesn’t need to panic; it needs honesty.

History doesn’t have to repeat itself to warn us. Sometimes, the warning is quieter: overconfidence, abstraction, household pressure, hidden risk, and leaders who believe consequences can be managed forever.

Even America’s credit standing has been warning us. S&P downgraded the United States in 2011, Fitch followed in 2023, and Moody’s did the same in 2025, leaving the country without a top rating from any of the three major agencies. That does not mean collapse is imminent. It means the margin for denial is shrinking.

This is why America needs to return to the principles of true fiscal conservatism. Not as a slogan. Spend what must be spent. Cut what no longer serves the people. Stop pretending every hard choice can be postponed. And remember that stewardship is not cruelty. It is how a free country preserves the space for its children to choose their own futures.

Today, we honor those who gave everything to our country.

A country worthy of sacrifice should never be careless with the future made possible by those sacrifices.