It’s a triple play: Baseball, slumps & Mother Nature
Add comment May 2nd, 2009
Mother Nature, it seems, hates being left out.
Whenever an economic crisis of unparalleled ferocity grips the planet, she seems particularly determined to get a little piece of the action. (For some reason, Major League Baseball likes to be involved, too.)
Ladies and gentleman, may I present swine flu.
As if our latest Great Recession isn’t enough, along comes Mother Nature and one dilly of a flu bug. Like the economic crisis, it is spanning the globe. And it stands to intensify the economic fallout of the financial meltdown — at least, if history is any indication.
In the 1930s, as the Great Depression threatened to strangle the economy, the Great Plains states disintegrated. Almost literally.
The Dust Bowl took root after the severe drought that began in 1931. From Kansas to Texas, one of the world’s largest wheat-producing regions became an arid wasteland in less than two years. The exodus began for farmers and their families. It lasted most of the decade and stymied most early efforts to stabilize the economy.
In 1989, when the federal government finally stepped in to resolve the savings-and-loan crisis that had plunged the economy into a recession, Hurricane Hugo ravaged the Carolinas just before an earthquake roiled the San Francisco Bay area, postponing the start of that year’s World Series for 10 days.
Clearly, Mother Nature is trying to make some kind of point.
I could argue, of course, that it’s less the meddling of Mother Nature than the complete inability of the public to remember the recession, thus almost ensuring a next one. Besides, Mother Nature never takes a break — the SARS outbreak in Asia was in 2004; the tsunami that ravaged Indonesia was in 2005. And those were terrific years, economically speaking.
Still, it all seems a little too coincidental to me, especially considering her role as the culprit behind the Dutch tulip bulb bubble of the 1630s.
Her timing is a little off sometimes. One of the most significant earthquakes of all time, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, rocked San Francisco in 1906. It wasn’t until the next year, which found the country mired in a deep recession, that John Pierpont Morgan rallied his rival bankers to pony up their own money to stave off the Panic of 1907.
And lest you forget, the Cubs won the World Series that year.
Even Mother Nature can have an off year now and again, but nothing like the Cubs.
Contact Business Editor Annette LaCross at alacross@rrstar.com or 815-987-1295.
