From (1) Reich and Prussian Minister of Economics and General Plenipotentiary (1937), and (2) President of the Reichsbank (1939) (discussion, Kopper (1998)). While it’s an inexact analogy, it’s of interest to recall it was Hermann Göring. I thought of this when I saw Russell Vought on TV today:
Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought vowed Friday to press an investigation into renovations at the Federal Reserve building, which he called a “palace” where costs are running amok.
A great line from the Wikipedia entry on Schacht:
[Schacht] had grown increasingly dissatisfied with Göring’s near-total ignorance of economics, and was also concerned that Germany was coming close to bankruptcy.
The main points of disagreement were the Goering’s demand for rearmament despite fiscal strains, aiming for autarky/self-reliance, and dismissal of concerns about deficit spending. Sounds familiar to me.
<small>* Aside: Walther Funk succeeded Schlacht as President of the Reichsbank. I spent half a year living in Funk’s house, on the Wannsee, currently the home of the American Academy in Berlin (as a guest of my wife, a fellow there).</small>
Funny you should mention the similarity. Vought has ‘laid out plans to use armed forces to quell any domestic “riots.”’, by which he meant protests agaist his prefered policies. Göring would be so proud.
https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-vought-center-renewing-america-maga
Off topic – A new ECB study estimates that as much as 4.7% of EMU GDP could be lost to extreme weather events by 2030:
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/blog/date/2025/html/ecb.blog20250709~aed804c955.en.html
The authors note that this 5-year estimation horizon is consistent with typical central bank forecasting – within the period normal business and interest rate cycles. It is also a short enough period that climate deniers and their ilk can’t credibility moan about the flakiness of long-term forrcasts.
The authors note that a 4.7% annual loss in output is similar in scale to the losses of the Great Financial Crisis. What I think is implied, though, is that losses anticipated in this study are not a one-time thing. There is no recovery, just continued losses.
In contrast to the potential 4.7% annual loss from extreme weather events, note that the European Green Deal, which aims ar a 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, is expected to cost just 0.5% of GDP.
Anyone know of a similar study for North America? Let us know before it gets stuffed down the memory hole.
Losses are not evenly distributed across sectors. Losses to farm output could reach 15%, which raises some grim prospects for food supply.
Schact was the man who defeated hyperinflation.
In 1938 he was the man who the nazis tasked with finding international jewry and getting them to pay german jews to go to palestine because of their BOP problems. Alas for the nazis international jewry did not exist
A thought I had when trump called the recent Texas floods a “once in 100 years” event: Some of the Mystic Campground girls may have been from the Houston area and experienced the flooding from Hurricane Harvey in 2017. So they experienced two catastrophic and deadly flooding events in their short 10 to 12 year life spans. Calling these more frequent extreme weather events a “once in 100 years” event is an attempt to blind you to the truth that you need to take action to prevent climate change – https://apnews.com/article/texas-floods-extreme-weather-attitudes-preparations-cc9d55c1f2440d78e01dcc65ec748112
we build infrastructure to protect livestock, such as field levees, to the 100 year storm event. we build schools and hospitals to the 500 year event. for clarity, the probability of either event occurring in a given year is 1/100=1% and 1/500=0.2%, respectively. What this means is that there is about a 50% probability of a 100 year storm occurring in the average persons 75 year lifespan. and that rises to 63% over a 100 year period. for most people, the odds of a 100 year event occurring in their lifetime is a coin flip. these are not rare events. even for a 500 year event, you are looking at about a 15% chance of occurring over those time periods. so once again, not really a rare event. and folks like bruce hall think it is ok to fire and reduce the funding of the people who actually warn us of these emergencies. are you still washing off the blood of those dozens of little girls who died in the flood, bruce? only monsters would advocate the types of cuts and policies you embrace bruce.