Conservative media react to talk of Obama-led economic recovery by attacking FDR and New Deal
SUMMARY: In recent weeks, several conservative media figures, echoed by Republican lawmakers, have responded to comparisons in the media of President-elect Barack Obama to FDR, or assertions in the media that a New Deal-level of government intervention will be necessary to resolve the current economic crisis, by asserting that the New Deal was a dismal failure, plunging the 1930s economy into a depression, an assertion that prominent progressive economists flatly reject.
In recent weeks, as the current state of the economy is giving rise to references to the Great Depression, some media outlets have drawn comparisons between President-elect Barack Obama and former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, characterizing Obama as inclined or compelled to take dramatic New Deal-level measures to revive the economy. During a November 16 CBS' 60 Minutes interview, correspondent Steve Kroft asked Obama if he had been "reading anything about the Depression, anything about FDR," and Kroft also referred to reports that "a number of Democratic congressmen have proposed programs that are part of sort of a new New Deal." On its November 24 cover, Time magazine superimposed Obama's face on an iconic image of Roosevelt with the title, "The New New Deal"; in the accompanying essay, contributor Peter Beinart argued that Obama might be in a position to effect a transformation on an ailing but receptive country as dramatic as the change Roosevelt brought about in his time.
Numerous conservative media figures and public leaders have responded to the comparisons -- Obama to Roosevelt, the current economic crisis to the Great Depression -- as well as to suggestions that measures on the scope of the New Deal are needed to revive the economy by denouncing the New Deal as ineffective or damaging, thereby arguing that government intervention on the scale that Roosevelt launched destroys rather than saves the economy. During the November 23 edition of ABC's This Week, Washington Post columnist George Will asked, "Before we go into a new New Deal, can we just acknowledge that the first New Deal didn't work?" He added: "That is, the biggest collapse in industrial production in history occurred in 1937, eight years after the stock market collapse of 1929, five years into the New Deal."
The comments echoed remarks Will made the week before on This Week when he asserted that "one of the ways we turned a depression into the Great Depression that didn't end until the Japanese fleet appeared off Hawaii was that there were no rules, and investors went on strike, because the government was completely improvising." He added: "Net investment was negative through almost all of the '30s because, again, people did not know the environment in which they were operating because the government had the fidgets and would not let rules and markets work."
New York Times columnist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, who participated in This Week's November 16 roundtable, responded:
KRUGMAN: No, the negative net investment was because, you know, when you have 20 percent unemployment, and all the factories are standing idle, who wants to build a new one? You don't need to invoke the government to explain that. No, what actually happened was, you know, there was an -- there was a collapse of the financial system, which was not restored for a long time. There was a persistent deep slump in consumer demand and, therefore, no investment demand, and so you were stuck in this trap.
Roosevelt got the economy moving somewhat. By 1937, things were a lot better than they were in 1933. Then he was persuaded to balance the budget, or try to, and he raised taxes and cut spending and the economy went back down again. And it took an enormous public works program known as World War II to bring the economy out of the Depression.
Krugman's comments echo arguments in his November 10 New York Times column, in which he asserted that Roosevelt's policies included "long-run achievements" that "remain the bedrock of our nation's economic stability," and that Roosevelt's short-term successes were constrained because "his economic policies were too cautious." Krugman wrote:
Now, there's a whole intellectual industry, mainly operating out of right-wing think tanks, devoted to propagating the idea that F.D.R. actually made the Depression worse. So it's important to know that most of what you hear along those lines is based on deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. The New Deal brought real relief to most Americans.
[...]
F.D.R. wasn't just reluctant to pursue an all-out fiscal expansion -- he was eager to return to conservative budget principles. That eagerness almost destroyed his legacy. After winning a smashing election victory in 1936, the Roosevelt administration cut spending and raised taxes, precipitating an economic relapse that drove the unemployment rate back into double digits and led to a major defeat in the 1938 midterm elections.
Similarly, in a November 17 post on his personal blog, Brad DeLong, an economics professor at the University of California-Berkeley, wrote, "Private investment recovered in a very healthy fashion as Roosevelt's New Deal policies took effect. The interruption of the Roosevelt Recovery in 1937-1938 is, I think, wel [sic] understood: Roosevelt's decision to adopt more 'orthodox' economic policies and try to move the budget toward balance and the Federal Reserve's decision to contract the money supply by raising bank reserve requirements provide ample explanation of that downturn."
Other media conservatives have also referred to Time's Obama-Roosevelt comparison to attack Obama and assert that Roosevelt's efforts did not work, without making the distinction Krugman made between the New Deal and what Krugman wrote was Roosevelt's "eager[ness] to return to conservative budget principles" in 1937. Some cite former Wall Street Journal writer Amity Shlaes' 2007 book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (HarperCollins) to attack suggestions that significant further government intervention is necessary to save the economy.
- In his November
18 National Review column,
editor Rich Lowry also cited Shlaes and addressed the Time cover in the context of
attacking Obama and the New Deal:
Democrats are enjoying a New Deal reverie wherein a Democratic president solves an economic crisis with public-works projects. The new issue of Time magazine features Obama on the cover decked out in the trappings of FDR. This image would accurately capture the moment, (1) if Obama -- president-elect for all of two weeks -- had actually accomplished something, and (2) if Franklin Roosevelt's economic program had really ended the Great Depression.
Neither is true. As Amity Shlaes documents in her book The Forgotten Man, the economy limped along under FDR's stewardship in the 1930s. Many of the era's public-works projects were undertaken for political reasons as well as economic ones.
- In a November 18 post
on The American Spectator
blog, The Obama Watch, contributor Jeffrey Lord referred to Beinart's
Time story in criticizing
one of Obama's responses during his 60
Minutes interview,
writing:
The Obama idea behind doing "something that works" is, as Time acknowledges, nothing if not the new New Deal in both fact and form. What goes unmentioned by Mr. Beinart and his editors is that FDR's penchant for experimenting effectively unstabilized the American economy for a full decade. Markets crave stability and FDR proudly promised none. He tried "something that works" with currency and exchange policy, agriculture, utilities and the gold standard, to name but a few. The last policy was so erratic no less than the famed economist John Maynard Keynes described FDR's work as "the gold standard on the booze." According to Amity Shlaes, author of the current bestseller The Forgotten Man, one fine morning FDR informed his advisors he was raising the gold standard by twenty-one cents. Why? Said FDR in a classic "something that works" response: "It's a lucky number because it's three times seven."
[...]
The problem for President-elect Obama and his friends is that decades after the post-New Deal era have in fact gone by. To re-offer the New Deal in 2008 is just the same Old Deal.
What's "something that works" really all about? What is this cry for a new New Deal? As a new generation is about to learn, it is nothing more than the policy of the con job.
- In a column
written the week before the election, U.S.
News and World Report senior writer Michael Barone also cited
Shlaes and wrote
that "[w]ith victory in sight, Barack Obama's supporters are
predicting that he will give us a new New Deal. To see what that might
mean, let's look back on the original New Deal." He
continued:
The purpose of New Deal legislation was not, as commonly thought, to restore economic growth but rather to freeze the economy in place at a time when it seemed locked in a downward spiral. Its central program, the National Recovery Administration (NRA), created 700 industry councils for firms and unions to set minimum prices and wages. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), the ancestor of our farm bills, limited production to hold up prices. Unionization, encouraged by NRA and the 1935 Wagner Act, was meant to keep workers in jobs that the unemployed would have taken at lower pay.
These policies did break the downward spiral. But, as Amity Shlaes points out in The Forgotten Man, they failed to restore growth. Double-digit unemployment continued throughout the 1930s; despite population growth, the economy failed to rebound to 1920s production levels. High taxes on high earners (a Herbert Hoover as well as Franklin Roosevelt policy) financed welfare payments ("spread the wealth around") but reduced investment and growth.
University of Texas professor James Galbraith responded to Shlaes's thesis by criticizing her methodology; on November 18, at a Campaign for America's Future conference, Galbraith stated that "the underlying numbers, which Shlaes uses ... do not count the people who actually worked on the New Deal as employed. They count them as unemployed. Why did they do that? Because in retrospect, to give -- to put a charitable construction on it, they wanted to assess the condition of the private economy."
Some conservative media figures and politicians have attacked Obama by asserting that Roosevelt not only did not improve the economy, but made it worse, also without making the distinction that Krugman made between Roosevelt's policies pre-1937 and those after. In a November 19 column, National Review Online editor-at-large Jonah Goldberg referred to the portion of the 60 Minutes interview in which Obama stated that "what you see in FDR that I hope my team can emulate is not always getting it right, but projecting a sense of confidence and a willingness to try things and experiment in order to get people working again." Goldberg wrote that "FDR always projected such confidence, even as he made things worse. But this isn't another column about how FDR prolonged the Depression. Been there, done that." Indeed, on October 9, Goldberg had appeared on CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck and stated, "FDR's policies made the depression longer and deeper. Everywhere else in the world, they had the depression. In America, FDR made the depression great."
Conservative radio hosts have also claimed that the New Deal created or extended the Great Depression in arguing that Obama's policies might also make have a similar effect:
- During the November 24 broadcast of Clear Channel's The War Room, co-host Jim Quinn, discussing how Democrats might deal with the current economic problems, stated: "[W]hat they're doing right now is exactly the template for what FDR did to create the Depression. Everyone thinks that the crash of '99 -- or '29 -- created a Depression. It didn't. It created a recession. It was what FDR did that turned it into a Great Depression." He added: "We are getting prepared to exactly the same thing. He called it 'priming the pump'; Obama calls it 'stimulus.' "
- During the November 23 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill Cunningham stated of "liberal Democrats": "Instead of putting grease in the wheels of the American economy, they're going to put sand, and they're going to exacerbate a recession into a depression, much like Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in 1933, 4, and 5. We were in a serious recession. By the time FDR got done, we were in a full-fledged depression."
- During the November 24 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Mark Levin asserted that "the New Deal almost destroyed this country." He continued: "It extended the Depression for seven years. It's created massive debt that we've been carrying for 75 years, and one day, that will come due as well. The New Deal had nothing to do with our economic recovery, it was World War II." Levin also argued that there was "24.9 percent unemployment at the height of the New Deal," and that "not until World War II did it come down from double digits."
These conservative media attacks are echoed in the comments of Republican elected officials:
- In an October 30 column on National Review Online, former Rep. Pat Toomey (PA) wrote that "[f]ive major policy errors helped turn the 1929 downturn into a full-blown Depression lasting over ten years, and Barack Obama has promised to repeat all five of these." He further wrote that "Hoover's and Roosevelt's misguided policies on taxes, trade, spending, labor, and regulation surely cost millions of jobs and inflicted years of economic misery. Barack Obama is promising a return to those failed policies. The stock market has noticed."
- In a statement released on November 21, Rep. Mike Pence (IN), who was elected chairman of the House Republican Conference, asserted that "if we will fight for the interests of everyday Americans and offer positive substantive alternatives without unnecessary acrimony, the American people will soon tire of the flowery speeches and see the Democratic agenda for what it is -- the failed ideas of the Great Society and the New Deal. And they will come looking for the alternative."
From the November 23 edition of ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (host): And there have been some suggestions, Arianna, that maybe -- at least some of his supporters have leaked this out in recent days -- well, maybe he was against not bailing out Lehman after all. He wanted more help from the government.
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON (Huffington Post editor in chief): Right, exactly. And he's not ideological, and Obama has stressed again and again the importance of this being a fact-based administration where ideology does not rule. And he, in a way -- the president-elect -- has laid out the blueprint of massive public investment. It's not mailing out checks, as George said. It's very different. It's really rebuilding our infrastructure, rebuilding our schools, doing things that are actually both going to improve the economy in the long term and help get us out of the crisis faster.
STEPHANOPOULOS: [Treasury Secretary-designate Tim] Geithner and a new New Deal?
DAVID BROOKS (New York Times columnist): Maybe. You know, I guess the one thing I'd say is, one of things they cannot do is go back to the New Deal. One of the things they're talking about is building roads, building bridges. Well, sometimes it takes 80 months to get an infrastructure project actually going. The amount of money spent in the first couple of years in infrastructure -- miniscule. So, the one thing I'd say to them: Think about the new economy. This is a human capital economy. Think about relationships and not roads. And so, if I were designing employment plans --
STEPHANOPOULOS: And what does that mean exactly?
BROOKS: Right, if I were designing employment plans, the things I would think about is do some road building, build some schools -- that's fine -- but think about national service. Think about how you're going to build relationships. Think about how you're going to build federal money to create communities that actually employ a lot of people in a service sector sort of economy. To me, they're -- the way they're talking now, they're doing a lot of reading about [Roosevelt adviser] Harry Hopkins. I would spend a lot more time thinking about, "How am I going to build relationships using service, building communities?"
ROBERT KUTTNER (co-founder, The American Prospect): I really think -- respectfully, I disagree. It's a kind of a straw man. I mean, I think you have to do all of the above. I think the hit to the economy is so serious. Contrary to the usual belief, you can get infrastructure programs going pretty quickly, and by giving relief to state and local government, you get help on the way instantaneously. Right now, state and local governments are laying off people. They're deferring projects. They're cutting health and education. If the government cuts a check to state and local governments to the tune of $100, $150 billion dollars, not one of those layoffs have to occur.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Frees up some of their money in the [inaudible].
KUTTNER: So -- so, it may take some time -- let me just finish -- it make take some time to create new jobs, but at least we can prevent layoffs from occurring in state and local governments. And you can get infrastructure programs going within six months.
BROOKS: I'm not against that. I just think -- they're talking about, as [Sen.] Chuck Schumer [D-NY] did, 5 to $700 billion dollars. We can agree on state aid. I do agree on that. The things we know work: state aid works, food stamps works, extending unemployment -- which they've done -- that works. That clearly works to stimulate the economy. It's actually very hard to spend $700 billion quickly, and what they're -- if you've got a tiddlywinks hall of fame, they're going to fund that thing. They are going to fund everything.
WILL: They do that anyway under earmarks and all the rest. I mean, what you're proposing is reactionary liberalism. That is, whatever exists, double-down on it. Before we go into a new New Deal, can we just acknowledge the first New Deal didn't work? That is, the biggest collapse in industrial production in history occurred in 1937, eight years after the stock market collapse of 1929, five years into the New Deal.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, let me --
HUFFINGTON: You know, it is really another of the myths that conservatives cling to now, that the New Deal did not work. And it's really, as every sort of myth of conservatism has exploded --
WILL: Refute it.
HUFFINGTON: -- you know, whether it is -- you know, whether it is the fact that the "leave us alone coalition," you know, of Grover Norquist, or the tax-and-spend slogans -- those are not being repeated anymore. So, now we're going back to the New Deal, or as Senator [Richard] Shelby [R-AL] said, "We're not going to throw money at problems." I mean, I agree with Robert, that it's got to be both. It's got to be major infrastructure, public investments.
From the November 16 edition of This Week with George Stephanopoulos:
WILL: Sam, one of the ways we turned a depression into the Great Depression that didn't end until the Japanese fleet appeared off Hawaii was that there were no rules, and investors went on strike, because the government was completely improvising. Net investment was negative through almost all of the '30s because, again, people did not know the environment in which they were operating because the government had the fidgets and would not let rules and markets work.
KRUGMAN: This is not the way -- OK. It's not the way I read the history. It's not the way -- no. What actually happened --
WILL: Am I wrong about net investment?
SAM DONALDSON (ABC News correspondent): Yes.
KRUGMAN: No, the negative net investment was because, you know, when you have 20 percent unemployment, and all the factories are standing idle, who wants to build a new one? You don't need to invoke the government to explain that. No, what actually happened was, you know, there was an -- there was a collapse of the financial system, which was not restored for a long time. There was a persistent deep slump in consumer demand and, therefore, no investment demand, and so you were stuck in this trap.
Roosevelt got the economy moving somewhat. By 1937, things were a lot better than they were in 1933. Then he was persuaded to balance the budget, or try to, and he raised taxes and cut spending and the economy went back down again. And it took an enormous public works program known as World War II to bring the economy out of the Depression.
From the October 9 edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck (accessed via Nexis):
GOLDBERG: The way I look at it is, the Great Depression was this thing that progressives in America were waiting for. They had been talking about how they wanted to revive what they did under Woodrow Wilson for -- throughout the 1920s, but the 1920s were prosperous and no one wanted to hand over the entire country, let alone the economy to a bunch of sort of pinhead social planners.
And then you had the Great Depression, and all of a sudden the progressives said, "Aha! This is our moment." And we've been seeing something similar over the last decade or so, where we've seen after Katrina all these intellectuals of the left start saying, "This proves it's time for a new New Deal."
After 9-11, people like Bill Moyers said, "This is time for a new New Deal." I think Chuck Schumer actually has a macro on his keyboard, just hits F-10 after any event, and it says, "This is the moment for a new New Deal."
GLENN BECK (host): Right.
GOLDBERG: And so they're looking at this, even though the new New Deal prolonged the Great Depression; it did not end the Great Depression.
BECK: World War II ended it.
GOLDBERG: Right. FDR's policies made the depression longer and deeper. Everywhere else in the world, they had the depression. In America, FDR made the depression great.
BECK: Great, yes. OK. So here's the thing that Americans should be concerned -- and I would honestly be saying this -- I mean, look, I don't trust John McCain, either. I have no idea what this guy's going to do with the economy.
From the November 24 edition of Clear Channel's The War Room with Quinn & Rose:
QUINN: Costco was a mob scene yesterday.
ROSE TENNENT (co-host): Really?
QUINN: Absolutely a mob scene.
TENNENT: See, that's how it was everywhere I was yesterday.
QUINN: Yeah. Yeah, and I'm thinking, "So, where's the bad economy?" And, you know, I had dinner with some friends on Saturday night at a very expensive restaurant. Place was full. It was -- full to the walls. Now -- but Democrats are working on it.
TENNENT: Yeah. Yeah.
QUINN: And we will have --
TENNENT: We'll get there eventually, don't worry.
QUINN: Yes. We'll have our Great Depression, OK, if they have anything to say about it, because --
TENNENT: Yeah, if it's the last thing they do.
QUINN: Well, that's -- well, what they're doing right now is exactly the template for what FDR did to create the Depression. Everybody thinks that the crash of '99 -- or '29 -- created the Depression. It didn't. It created a recession. It was what FDR did that turned it into a Great Depression. We are getting prepared to do exactly the same thing. He called it "priming the pump"; Obama calls it "stimulus." And we're gonna talk about that after the half-hour, and why it can't possibly work. And, you know, you would think by now -- I mean, you saw what happened to your 401(k) after they pumped $700 billion dollars into the system. What happened? It tanked.
TENNENT: Yup, nothing happened.
QUINN: Exactly.
TENNENT: Yeah, there's just nothing there.
QUINN: So, shows you that it doesn't work.
From the November 23 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks' Live on Sunday Night, It's Bill Cunningham:
CUNNINGHAM: And as far as fear, there is a real sense that when you have a 401(k), that becomes a 201(k), on it's way to a 101(k). Your retirement's gonna be delayed, and there's a great fear that when colleges and universities in January jack up tuitions, loans may not be approved. People are having their home equity loans capped. They're having credit cards capped. There's a sense that 7 or 8 percent unemployment may become 10 to 12 percent, and that we're heading toward a collision and nobody's in charge.
And few people I know, John Tamney, believe that the liberal Democrats have an answer to help an ailing economy. Instead of putting grease in the wheels of the American economy, they're gonna put sand, and they're gonna exacerbate a recession into a depression, much like Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in 1933, 4, and 5. We were in a serious recession. By the time FDR got done, we were in a full-fledged depression. And I fear that's what coming.
From the November 24 edition of ABC Radio Networks' The Mark Levin Show:
LEVIN: Schumer was talking about a little New Deal, another New Deal. They're very excited. Well, the New Deal almost destroyed this country. It extended the Depression for seven years. It's created massive debt that we've been carrying for 75 years, and one day, that will come due as well. The New Deal had nothing to do with our economic recovery, it was World War II. And everybody knows it who's honest -- 24.9 percent unemployment at the height of the New Deal.
And not until World War II did it come down from double digits. And they spent the country into a massive debt. They created program after program, law after law, bureaucracy after bureaucracy. They built roads and buildings. They built bridges and tunnels. And the people were miserable. They were poor. They were hungry.
The economic system was on its back, because all that does is move a pot of money from one citizen to another. All it does is spread the wealth, or spread the income, if you will. It doesn't fix anything. And that's the road we're on. Whatever this is, it's going to be deeper and longer, because the way the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve and the Congress and this president and the next president will have reacted. How many more businesses are going to be subsidized to the tune of tens of billions of dollars?
Ladies and gentlemen, six months ago, if one company had come to Congress and said, "We need $5 billion to survive," we would've been stunned. We would've been repulsed. And these numbers -- $7.4 trillion -- are mind-numbing.
Reaganism vs. The New Deal
How well does that sum up this situation?
by asserting that the New Deal was a dismal failure, plunging the 1930s economy into a depression, an assertion that prominent progressive economists flatly reject.
No, almost all economists dispute that, except the extreme conservative ideologues, of whom there are few. The evidence is not there for this.
what has become a mantra, and you can see it repeated in some of the media comments listed here, is that roosevelt made a depression out of what was merely a bad recession. totally wrong. unemployment reached 25 percent in 1932, hoover's last year. see link. and unemployment dropped steadily after roosevelt came into office.
http://encarta.msn.com/media_461546193/unemployment_during_the_depression.html
-- It remained high until World War II brought an economic recovery. --
Not FDR...but WWII...at least that's what your link says.
i didn't say that it did not remain high. what i said, guess you missed it, is that a lot of media figures suggest that roosevely made a depression out of what was merely a bad recession. wrong. the unemployment rates under roosevelt never touched the high reached under hoover.
-- the unemployment rates under roosevelt never touched the high reached under hoover. --
No argument here.
I just provided you with an opportunity to multi-task and shed your linear reasoning mask.
The link clearly shows the unemployment rate was never as high as 1933...what it does not prove is the effectiveness of FDR's policies.
What it does show...for whatever the reasons are...under FDR the unemployment rate went from horribly high to just extremely high.
Kind of like giving a coach a raise because instead of finishing dead last...he improved to next-to-last. Some would call that improvement...some would say not so much.
perhaps you could "multi task". what i said in my first post is undoubtedly true, and you have no answer for it. i said that media figures are making the claim that it was roosevelt's policies that turned a recession into a depression. if you want to change the subject to how effective they were, it still does not change what i said.
and you do realize that we are talking about two different coaches? under coach hoover, unemployment went up by a significant factor every year. under coach roosevelt, it came down by a significant factor, not in a straight line, but down. as for "whatever the reasons are", umm, isn't that what we're talking about here? that his polices brought down the "horribly high" rate he inherited? kind of like how you will jump all over obama because it might take him awhile to get out of the mess he inherited. unlike bush, who took over after the biggest peacetime expansion in our history, and still screwed it up.
-- perhaps you could "multi task". --
Nope...sorry bucko...your argument doesn't interest me.
I'm now officially on a singular mission...to enjoy the holiday. Family, friends, and plenty of good eats...and lots to be thankful for.
Happy Thanksgiving!!!
i'm sure it doesn't interest you, since you didn't refute a thing i said. and since you started out trying to refute my original post by insisting it was ww2 and "not fdr" that was responsible for any economic recovery. i never contested the rate remained high until the war, but fdr inherited a very difficult situation. sorry, bucko.
Here's my holiday present for you...a little fodder to keep you occupied.
"i'm sure it doesn't interest you"...you're quite correct and we agree.
"you didn't refute a thing i said"...never was my intent, just helping you with some academics concerning your link.
"since you started out trying to refute my original post by insisting it was ww2 and "not fdr" that was responsible for any economic recovery"...nope, I just reported what your link said.
" i never contested the rate remained high until the war"...a pat on the back for understanding the issue.
" fdr inherited a very difficult situation"...of course you're correct...another pat on the back.
"sorry, bucko."...you're correct again...must be an echo.
Enjoy yourself...no thanks necessary.
hmm. still here? apparently, you are "interested", though you claim not. and thanks for your "help", with what, i'm not sure. if you were not intending to refute what i said, then what was the point of saying it was "not fdr" who brought about an economic recovery. because "economic recovery" is a relative term. what i did say in the original post was that unemployment dropped after fdr came into office. i posted a link for all, including you, to see. you're pretending you're not really disagreeing with me, when that's what you were doing. as for the "echo", that might be the sound of you bumping your head.
as for the "echo", that might be the sound of you bumping your head.
That's pretty funny
I was starting to believe I was the biggest jerk at MMFA, then wes posted. ;)
I'll work harder to win that title after the holidays.
Have a good Thanksgiving MeFirst.
ROUNDHOUSE, I never considered you as even a small jerk but if you need votes, you have mine..for a price....but I must review the slate..and maybe vote a few times. You know us liberals.
Thanks princeofwheels, that's funny. I know us libs alright, vote early and vote often, right?. But I'm quick to insult on these pages and I am a jerk to many authors here. Perhaps you have missed some of my more lowly fed work?
I just wish the other jerks here (not you), left, right and so called moderate would acknowledge their hypocrisy.
Meh, Happy Thanksgiving.
you too, r.h.
Be afraid, Wes. Be very afraid...
It dropped in half from 1933 to 1937. That sounds kind of effective.
Unemployment is one small indicator of our economy! FDR without any doubt, worsened the depression and the new deal policies kept the economy in chaos long after FDR left office! There is not ONE economist on earth(paul Krugman is a die-hard liberal with strong political motives) who would argue FDR's policies helped the economy in the 1930's or for many years after! As a matter of fact, LBJ's new society tried to resurrect the same type of policies with the same results, a failed economy with the dollar worth little overseas for many years. If anyone thinks Obama is going to make those same mistakes, I think they are wrong, and if I am wrong, this country will suffer dearly ala Jimmy Carter! History is clear!
This is one of the best articles written by mmfa...congrats.
It has lots of info, theories, and opinions concerning past economic policies...juxtaposed with today's situation.
While this is an attempt to defend Obama's 'as yet to be defined' economic policies...it's a fair give and take.
I'm having trouble keeping up. W. inherited a recession, then created a great economy, until Obama was elected, at which point we entered the Obama Recession, which lasted a couple of weeks. Now (according to the blabbers who have visited Costco and packed restaurants) the Obama recession has ended and we're back in the thriving Bush economy, for a few weeks, until Obama takes office and...what, Obama Recession, part II?
They really aren't putting much into their BS anymore, besides effort, are they?
Regardless of the political blather and spin from both sides...the argument at this point seems to be a simple one.
Within the large framework...it appears that Obama is a believer that more govt. policies and intervention is the solutiion to the current economic situation...while his opponents think large govt. programs are not the answer.
We're still two months away from Obama taking office and defining his specific agendas beyond hope and change...and I'm rooting for him to be the effective leader that he portrayed in his campaign.
Yet, that brings to mind the very apt comment from Pres.Reagan. It's okay to trust everyone...but you still have to cut the cards before the deal.
I don't think we should dismiss the government until we've experienced one that's staffed with competent people.
I guess that's true...if one believes that the USA was founded in the year 2001.
My history book goes a little further back.
I said experience, not reading about it in a history book.
Obviously your history book was written by an idiot if it's telling you that conservative incompetence started in 2001. Conservatives have been actively seeking to destroy good government by underfunding and mismanaging essential people first institutions since Nixon.
in a nutshell. They are already writing Obama off. In the 30's there was no internet. Getting information is as quick as you are willing to google and that includes our leaders, who seem to have an abhorrence to that activity and as a result, appear to be dumb numbskulls in public. The wild fluctuaotions in the stock market everytime Bernanke ( and others ) open their mouths revealing ignorance indicates to me this is not like the 30's at all. this is a new cow . I trust president elect Obama and in four years, I will judge him again.
It's been customary practice among cons for decades now to ruthlessly attack everything FDR, including. of course, the utter garbage that he sneaked us into World War II. So now when the subject is the economy, why not claim that he created the depression that he in fact inherited from his version of W, the late unlamented Herbert Hoover? Sooner or later, FDR will be portrayed in the media as Antichrist Part I, the antecedent to Obama as Antichrist Part II...
Well said. FDR was one of our greatest presidents, unlike puddenhead W. Roosevelt guided this country abely through two of its greatest crisises in its history, How many other presidents can make that claim? The CONS cannot handle that fact.
Let them argue against FDR. That way everyone will realize that they are crazy. And Progressives and Moderates can get the job of governing and administering the country in a responsible manner.
Will is an ideologue, refusing to let go of the dogma and "religion" of free market capitalism. He's dead wrong though. Reaganomics was a complete failure and FDR's New Deal saved this country from ruin. Historians will side with reason and facts, and not those with unyielding, blind faith such as Will.
Let me get this straight: The conservatives are saying "FDR's spending and public-works programs didn't end the depression, WWII did." But how does a war end a depression? By being an even larger spending and public works program.
So, are the conservatives saying that FDR's only fault was that he didn't made the New Deal bigger? That is not something I'm accustomed to hearing from them.
Please help me out here.
FDR_d
From my look back at the times, WWII was the springboard that spurred investment and spending in the private sector as opposed to previous "New Deal" govt. sector job creation.
So then, are the conservatives just saying that FDR's public works programs should have been contracted out to private corporations?
I cannot speak for all conservatives but my answer is no.
Investing in the private sector causes real growth and produces more real wealth than investing in the public sector jobs programs. Sure, the govt. can be a large consumer of private sector purchases. That goes without saying. But private sector investment is a more efficient allocation of resources than the public sector. Govt. spending in WWII involved investing and spending in the private sector and created jobs, profits, and savings that fueled growth.
First, thanks for your continuing help with my questions. Of course, that earns you a new question: How did the US government invest in (or spur private investment in) the private sector during WWII, beyond just consuming lots of purchases (e.g. planes, ships, and bombs) from private corporations?
But private sector investment is a more efficient allocation of resources than the public sector.(AA)
Is this another "strictly your opinion" moment, or are you trying to slip this in as a fact?
I think I've found the answer to my question, in "The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars from the Revolution to the War on Terror" by Robert D. Hormats:
"The president also authorized the use of government loans for military plant construction, agreed to relax antitrust enforcement to permit greater collaboration within the defense industry, and permitted procurement to be done on a cost-plus basis that would virtually ensure profitability."
So, is it fair to say that this is the sort of thing that you think could have made the New Deal more effective in ending the Great Depression?
Actually poverty and unemployment went down from 1933 to 1941. Pundits never use actual statistics.
This is a funny little reality-disconnect with a lot of conservatives. Our (taxpayers) money going into public works/ commons type programs, employing people and improving the country is "robbery" and "socialism". The same tax dollars going to private corporations, while still employing people, but making a small group of people rich, is "freedom".
I always get a laugh out of rugged individualist type Republicans bragging about wartime economies based primarily on government contracts for weapons and other military-related industries.
So, are the conservatives saying that FDR's only fault was that he didn't made the New Deal bigger? That is not something I'm accustomed to hearing from them.
Yeah, these guys aren't too good at thinking things out, are they? They trumpet a Keynesian solution to rebut, er, Keynesianism.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep talking, because it's gonna make it even harder for you yahoos to admit you were wrong when Obama's plan is successful!
Paul Krugman takes George Will to the woodshed over FDR's Big FIX
By Heather Monday Nov 17, 2008 3:00pmFrom the man who called the union benefits at automotive companies a "welfare state," we have George Will on This Week showing his compassionate conservative side yet again. I would like to see George Will working on an assembly line until the age of 65 and then let him speak out about someone retiring before that age or receiving benefits that they somehow don't deserve. Working for thirty years at a company while giving your blood in the process is not enough for these people.
John Amato:
Conservatives love to rewrite history so they can trumpet their own philosophy. Paul Krugman explains to George Will how FDR got America out of the Depression. Conservatives have been trying to unravel the New Deal ever since.
Update: The video links with the correct video should be working now.
Krugman is one of our greatest economic minds.
If you are a race of hamsters.
Never let them know you're afraid. They turn vicious when they smell fear. Other than that a swell bunch of masonites.
Hi Noble.
Sasquat Itch, Washington
We need a Louis Kestenbaum-led economic recovery. Louis Kestenbaum would know how to lead us back into better economic times and has had far more experience than Obama (not saying much, I know) has!
Being born in 1935 kinda puts me as an eye-witness to FDR's administration and the benefits and consequences of that period. One of the first memories I have of reading the newspapers and listening on the radio is the constant hate-mongering of this president. In the decades after his death, hundreds of books appeared, full of contemptuous analyses of his policies and programs. It always boiled down to the same things. FDR had the gall to consider what most Americans needed at the time, not the rich cats (conservatives). He pushed against, as much as possible, the status quo that had and has existed since the middle ages: the "right" of the nobles (conservatives) to as much power and wealth as they could get at the expense of the population. We have a more modern term: entitlement. This clash of ideologies continues to this day. Instead of riding out in a carriage, tossing coins to the adoring, but starving crowds, FDR lowered the drawbridge and invited the "great unwashed" into the castle to discuss the problems. This is the one thing the haters could not abide. FDR "betrayed" that entitlement so long worshiped by the status quo. The fact that FDR was a fat cat himself, only added to his treason. Was he the "perfect" President? Of course not. Better to be imperfect, but empathetic instead of perfectly awful (no names, please).
My parents were life long Republicans and my dad always thought that Hoover got a bum rap. They were suspicious of government "entitlement" programs and hated LBJ's "Great Society." But he collected his social security all the same...
My parents and all of my aunts and uncles were supporters of FRD. My dad and uncles signed up for the Army or Navy on December 8, 1941. They went to war, came home and prospered. If you asked any of them why, they'd say that they had hope. That's what FDR gave to the people. He offered hope that with sacrifice would come a better world.
To them, he was a leader. Something we haven't had in my lifetime, until now.
I totally agree. FDR was a flawed human being like all the rest of us, but he brought hope and a calming presence. That, and a progressive platform that gets results.
My dad's aunts worshipped Roosevelt, which no doubt aggravated him no end. ;-)
Republicans never learn. They're like the guy in the movie "Memento."
I would speculate that the part of the right-wing brain that governs self-criticism is missing.
Their attack on Social Security was a large part of what brought the Repubs down this time--but they obviously have not figured this out.
If the they don't find another meme soon, they'll never get another chance to screw America up.
Basking in the Bama:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w12edTq2v7A
It's a funny thing. Back in 1982, ABC ran a show celebrating the 100th anniversary of President Roosevelt's birth. They interviewed President Reagan and the (at that time) living ex-Presidents on FDR's legacy. Who had the most positive things to say? Reagan. It's too bad that his adherents don't remember that.
The conservatives seem to find themselves in that paradoxical corner of hoping that the economic situation doesn't improve