The major problem with Mr. Burns' Prohibition is that he frames it in the classical socio-political context, completely ignoring the primary rule of "follow the money."

He does present the correct, and one of the few, and perhaps only places one will hear this, data on taxation and alcohol; that is, it was approximately 40 percent of government tax revenues when Prohibition was passed.

Later, it would constitute around 9 percent, but that was during the Great Depression and with the substantial growth in government the percentage had shrunken relative to size increase.

Why does this matter? Because it represented a major tax cut, what we have witnessed this past decade (tax cuts for the super-rich), and it also provided an extremely large "dark pool" of criminal money to be laundered through the Stock Exchange -- thus increasing speculation and potential for speculation leading up to the Great Crash of 1929.

Even more importantly, to follow the money one finds that the original banksters who financed the national movement in the passage of Prohibition, were the same ones who would quickly finance its demise in 1933.

Knowing all the variables allows for better comprehension of today's similarities and those of yesteryear.

Securitization (transforming debt into securities -- bonds) reoccurred beginning in the '80s, along with the creation of credit derivatives to underwrite the economic recovery of the S&L debacle back then during the Reagan Administration.

Securitization (this time involving "share" form as opposed to "bond" form) first occurred in America in 1909, and really took off in the 1920s, leading up to the Great Crash, and was halted in 1933, the same year that Prohibition was ended.

Today, securitization/credit derivatives continues on, as does the drug prohibition.

These are important factors to fully grasp and understand, as without a fundamental understanding of economic history, one doesn't understand what is really transpiring today.

And limiting the context and framing to ONLY sociopolitical circumstances, and ignoring all the facts and relevant economics of the situations, limits any real comprehension in the matter.