On March 24, 2000, the New England Patriots broke ground on their new stadium home in Foxborough, Massachusetts. The internet company CMGI won naming rights, agreeing to pay $114 million over 15 years for the privilege. The 2002 season opened on September 9 in the Patriots’ new home, tickets bearing the name, CMGI Stadium.
Except by that time, the “Dot-Com” bubble had burst. CMGI had ceased to exist. The stadium itself would open, bearing the name of a razor and shaving cream manufacturer.
Economic forces had combined with irrationality to bid up prices to the point of collapse, but this was neither the first nor the first time. We saw it in the housing bubble of the 2000s, and the “Bull Market” of the Roaring 20s.
The oddest of these speculative bubbles may be the “Tulpenwoede” (tulip madness) gripping Holland in the 17th century.
The first tulip bulbs came from the Ottoman Empire to Vienna in 1554, introduced to Europe by Ogier de Busbecq, ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I to the Sultan of Turkey. The tulip was different from anything in Europe, the intense, saturated colors soon turning the flower into a status symbol.
By the 17th century Holland had embarked on a Golden Age. The East Indies trade 
produced single voyage profits of 400% and more, as merchants built grand estates surrounded by flower gardens. The hyacinth enjoyed early popularity, but the plant at the center of it all was the spectacular, magnificent, tulip.
For much of this period, tulip bulbs were primarily of interest to the wealthy. The craze began to catch on with the middle and poorer classes by the mid-1630s. Soon, increased demand began to drive prices to irrational levels.
The market soared in late 1636, as prices bid up for bulbs planted to bloom the following spring. People mortgaged their homes and businesses, hoping to buy bulbs for resale at higher prices. At one point, “one single root of the rare species called the Viceroy”, sold for “two lasts of wheat, four lasts of rye, four fat oxen, eight fat swine, twelve fat sheep, two hogsheads of wine, four tuns (barrels) of beer, two tuns of butter, One thousands lbs. of cheese, one complete bed, a suit of clothes, and a silver drinking-cup”. In early 1637, single “Viceroy” bulbs bid between 3,000 and 4,200 guilders, at a time when skilled craftsman earned about 300 guilders a year. At one point, 5 hectares (12 acres) of land were offered for a single Semper Augustus bulb.
“Couleren” bulbs were most commonly traded, single hued flowers of yellow, red or white, followed by the multi-colored “Rosen” and “Violettin”. Rarest and most sought after were
the vivid streaks of yellow or white on the red, brown or purple backgrounds of the “Bizarden” (Bizarres). Ironically, these were the most sickly specimens, victims of a “Tulip breaking virus” which “broke” petals into two or more hues.
Confidence evaporated in 1637 and the market collapsed. The last recorded market data were reported on February 5, as 98 sales were recorded at wildly varying prices. Those who had taken possession of bulbs found their worth to be a fraction of the prices paid. Others were locked into futures contracts, obliged to pay ruinous sums for comparatively worthless flower bulbs.
Afterward
Today, the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), are Congressionally authorized hybrids or “GSEs” (government-sponsored enterprises), charged with “providing liquidity and stability to the U.S. housing and mortgage markets”. Better known as “Fannie Mae” and “Freddie Mac”, both entities are privately owned by shareholders and backed by taxpayers.
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was charged with regulating Fannie and Freddie in 1992. Before that, these organizations were required to buy only “prime” mortgages, notes which institutional investors would buy on the open market. Such standards made it too difficult for lower income, higher risk buyers to become homeowners, or so it was believed. Regulators imposed “affordable housing” 
guidelines that year, imposing a 30% quota and raising it to 50% by the end of the Clinton era. By 2007 under President Bush, 55% of all mortgages purchased by the mortgage giants were “sub-prime”.
Banks and brokers were happy to sing along, issuing “NINJA” loans (No Income No Job no Assets) to anyone who asked. “Low-doc” and “no-doc” mortgages called “liar loans” sprouted up everywhere, but gone were the days when your home town bank held your mortgage. No mortgage originator would ever be left holding the bag, should these loans turn bad. They sold them to Fannie and Freddie.
Fannie, Freddie and others “bundled” high risk mortgages into increasingly exotic financial instruments called “mortgage backed securities”, selling them off to investors and backing transactions with “credit default swaps” (CDS), a two-party agreement impossible to distinguish between an insurance contract and a bet.
The danger signs were there for those who would see, but Barney Frank said it best in
2003: “I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation toward subsidized housing.”
Property values doubled and doubled again. You were always going to make money in real estate. Family members sold to one another over and over at ever increasing prices, with none ever moving out of the house. Aggregate CDS values reached $62 Trillion in 2008, equivalent to a stack of dollar bills, reaching from Earth to the moon. 18 times.
Then, the bubble burst. Imagine waking one morning to find your entire pension or mutual fund account, was invested in that stuff.
That was the year when gas first hit $4/gallon. Those living closest to the financial cliff began to fall off, and foreclosures went through the roof. Highest risk mortgage holders were the first to default, people with $20,000 incomes and multiple investment properties. We all remember 2009. I myself lost a job of 15 years when my employer went under, briefly making my family part of the “zero percent”. Some will tell you that we haven’t emerged from the “Great Recession”, to this day.
The old subprime “MyCommunityMortgage” program is dead and buried, but not the geniuses who gave it life. Sub-prime has become a dirty word, so, until recently, regulators pushed “alt” mortgage guidelines. Once, your “income” had to be your own, whether or not you could document it. Now, you could claim other people’s income: your aunt, parents, even a roommate. They won’t be on the note, they have no responsibility to repay. They don’t even have to live there. As long as you can augment your income enough to qualify. What could go wrong with that?
Speaking of the Patriots, I hear there’s a game today. I’ll have to check it out. At this point, I’d rather think about football.
Go Patriots.
be related to her previous employment in US Radium’s Orange, New Jersey factory. By that time she was seriously ill, yet Columbia University “Specialist” Frederick Flynn and a “Colleague” pronounced her to be in “fine health”. It was only later that the two were revealed to be company executives.
Attorney Raymond Berry filed suit on Fryer’s behalf in 1927, the lawsuit joined by four other dial painters seeking $250,000 apiece in damages. Soon, the newspapers were calling them “radium girls”. The health of all five plaintiffs was deteriorating rapidly, while one stratagem after another was used to delay proceedings. By their first courtroom appearance in January 1928, none could raise their arm to take the oath. Grace Fryer was altogether toothless by this time, unable to walk, requiring a back brace even to sit up.
The Troop Transport USAT Dorchester sailed out of New York Harbor on January 23, 1943, carrying 902 service members, merchant seamen and civilian workers. They were headed for the Army Command Base in southern Greenland, part of a six-ship convoy designated SG-19, together with two merchant ships and escorted by the Coast Guard Cutters Comanche, Escanaba and Tampa.
more were killed in the blast, or in the clouds of steam and ammonia vapor pouring from ruptured boilers. Suddenly pitched into darkness, untold numbers were trapped below decks. With boiler power lost, there was no longer enough steam to blow the full 6 whistle signal to abandon ship, while loss of power prevented a radio distress signal. For whatever reason, there never were any signal flares.
Private William Bednar found himself floating in 34° water, surrounded by dead bodies and debris. “I could hear men crying, pleading, praying,” he recalled. “I could also hear the chaplains preaching courage. Their voices were the only thing that kept me going.”
The United States Congress attempted to confer the Medal of Honor on the four chaplains for their selfless act of courage, but strict requirements for “heroism under fire” prevented them from doing so. Congress authorized a one time, posthumous “Chaplain’s Medal for Heroism”, awarded to the next of kin by Secretary of the Army Wilber M. Brucker at Fort Myer, Virginia on January 18, 1961.
crowd and their claims to Punxsutawney Phil’s weather forecasting prowess. Alabama has “Birmingham Bill”, and Canada has Shubenacadie Sam. New York can’t seem to decide between Staten Island Chuck and New York City’s very own official groundhog, “Pothole Pete”.
In 2003, author Richard Rubin set out to interview the last surviving veterans of World War One. The people he sought were over 101, one was 113.
Frank Woodruff Buckles, born Wood Buckles, is one of them. Born on this day in 1901, Buckles joined the Ambulance Corps of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) at the age of 16. He never saw combat against the Germans, but he would escort 650 of them back home as prisoners.
Edward Donald “Eddie” Slovik was paroled in 1942, his criminal record making him 4F. “Registrant not acceptable for military service”. He took a job at the Montella Plumbing and Heating company in Dearborn, Michigan, where he met bookkeeper Antoinette Wisniewski, the woman who would later become his wife.
of my desertion we were in Albuff [Elbeuf] in France. I came to Albuff as a replacement. They were shelling the town and we were told to dig in for the night. The following morning they were shelling us again. I was so scared, nerves and trembling, that at the time the other replacements moved out, I couldn’t move. I stayed there in my fox hole till it was quiet and I was able to move. I then walked into town. Not seeing any of our troops, so I stayed over night at a French hospital. The next morning I turned myself over to the Canadian Provost Corp. After being with them six weeks I was turned over to American M.P. They turned me loose. I told my commanding officer my story. I said that if I had to go out there again I’d run away. He said there was nothing he could do for me so I ran away again AND I’LL RUN AWAY AGAIN IF I HAVE TO GO OUT THERE. — Signed Pvt. Eddie D. Slovik A.S.N. 36896415”.
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan ordered the repatriation of Slovik’s remains. He was re-interred at Detroit’s Woodmere Cemetery next to Antoinette, who had gone to her final rest eight years earlier.
be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.
was obliged to render aid in the event that either ally was attacked. On December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Ambassador Hiroshi Ōshima came to Joachim von Ribbentrop, looking for a commitment of support from the German Foreign Minister.
48 days later, at Hunter Field in Savannah, the Eighth Bomber Command was activated as part of the United States Army Air Forces. It was January 28, 1942.
Re-designated the Eighth Air Force on February 22, 1944, at its peak the “Mighty Eighth” could dispatch over 2,000 four engine bombers and more than 1,000 fighters on a single mission. 350,000 people served in the 8th AF during the war in Europe, with 200,000 at its peak in 1944.
1942 was a bad year for the allied war in the Pacific. The Battle of Bataan alone resulted in 72,000 prisoners being taken by the Japanese, marched off to POW camps designed for 10,000 to 25,000.
Joining the 3rd Infantry Division of George S. Patton’s 7th Army, Murphy participated in amphibious landings in Sicily in July, fighting in nearly every aspect of the Italian campaign. From Palermo to Messina and on to Naples, Anzio and Rome, the Germans were driven out of the Italian peninsula in savage and near continuous fighting that killed a member of my own family. By mid-December, the 3rd ID suffered 683 dead, 170 missing, and 2,412 wounded. Now Sergeant Murphy was there for most of it, excepting two periods when he was down with malaria.
“Colmar Pocket” was an 850 square mile area held by German troops: Murphy described it as “a huge and dangerous bridgehead thrusting west of the Rhine like an iron fist. Fed with men and materiel from across the river, it is a constant threat to our right flank; and potentially it is a perfect springboard from which the enemy could start a powerful counterattack.”
Let Murphy’s Medal of Honor Citation describe what happened next: “Second Lieutenant Audie L. Murphy, 01692509, 15th Infantry, Army of the United States, on 26 January 1945, near Holtzwihr, France, commanded Company B, which was attacked by six tanks and waves of infantry. Lieutenant Murphy ordered his men to withdraw to a prepared position in a woods while he remained forward at his command post and continued to give fire directions to the artillery by telephone. Behind him to his right one of our tank destroyers received a direct hit and began to burn. Its crew withdrew to the woods. Lieutenant Murphy continued to direct artillery fire which killed large numbers of the advancing enemy infantry. With the enemy tanks abreast of his position, Lieutenant Murphy climbed on the burning tank destroyer which was in danger of blowing up any instant and employed its .50 caliber machine gun against the enemy. He was alone and exposed to the German fire from three sides, but his deadly fire killed dozens of Germans and caused their infantry attack to waver. The enemy tanks, losing infantry support, began to fall back. For an hour the Germans tried every available weapon to eliminate Lieutenant Murphy, but he continued to hold his position and wiped out a squad which was trying to creep up unnoticed on his right flank. Germans reached as close as 10 yards only to be mowed down by his fire. He received a leg wound but ignored it and continued the single-handed fight until his ammunition was exhausted. He then made his way to his company, refused medical attention, and organized the company in a counterattack which forced the Germans to withdraw. His directing of artillery fire wiped out many of the enemy; he personally killed or wounded about 50. Lieutenant Murphy’s indomitable courage and his refusal to give an inch of ground saved his company from possible encirclement and destruction and enabled it to hold the woods which had been the enemy’s objective”.
Hollywood and, until his death in a plane crash in 1971, his post-war life was never free of it.
Historical Easter Eggs - Today in History 
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