Banging Out the Business Cycle

Reading this article in CFO, I paid special attention to the graphic that they put together from information available from the National Bureau of Economic Research. That graphic outlines the dates and durations of periods of contraction (recession/depression) and expansion since WWII.

What struck me was the general ugliness of the economy in the seventies and early eighties. I recall, as a kid, so much gloom and doom talk, things like books encouraging the stockpiling of guns and ammo and precious metals. TV shows like Little House on The Prairie and The Waltons seemed to exist just to make you feel better that your crops didn't just get destroyed by locusts and that you didn't have to crank a tin lizzie after rolling out of the bed you shared with your two brothers. I remember Carter in his sweater, hostages in the middle east, bomb shelter signs, and being genuinely scared that things were going badly. It made me feel good then, as it does now, to know that my home was equipped with a low tech wood burner - just in case.

Hence the origin of Bang It Out and Paint It - just the ingrained fears of a kid raised in the seventies expressed in a medium of the oughts.