The Real Story About What Ended The Great Depression

[Picaro]

Are you suggesting as others have that Keynes works, and if FDR had only spent money as in a war the depression would have been cured?

These types really don't understand why their economic ideologies are contradictory and stupid; they just like repeating dumb arguments they read somewhere else, and have no idea what they're talking about and don't care.

Re Morgenthau, he was an Establishment banker and wouldn't be sympathetic to the millions of families who benefited from FDR's policies, and was completely dedicated to his class prejudices and beliefs. He wouldn't have cared at all if many more millions of working class types had died or lost their farms and they and their children starved to death on the side of a road or in an alley somewhere ,just as modern right wingers wouldn't . Fortunately FDR and many others did. Even the more intelligent sociopaths, like Joe Kennedy, knew better, and backed FDR.

 

[Friends]

When the Great Depression hit there was no manual or instruction book on how to have prosperity. Hoover tried the trickle-down method with RFC and nothing. FDR thought the old tried and true method of balancing the budget would work, it never did, but he tried. Conditions in America however called for something to be done and as FDR had said, he would experiment, and he did. We started on a recovery with the New Deal. As America began to recover it frightened some fearing another depression. FDR stopped the New Deal, and the nation began to sink again. America started to sell war goods overseas and America started to recover again, but this time it didn't stop until sometime after the war. But the process indicated that Keynes may have been right, spend during a depression as we spent during the war, and pay the money back when we recover, which we never do.

Roosevelt blamed businessmen for the Depression, raised their taxes, and encouraged their employees to join labor unions. Naturally businessmen hated Roosevelt. Most Americans loved him, because life for them began to improve almost soon as Roosevelt became president. They were more likely to have jobs. They benefited from a growing public sector of the economy paid for by high taxes on the rich.

Roosevelt raised taxes on the rich, used the money to buy votes, used the votes to get more power to raise taxes on the rich even more. It was great fun, and it enabled the Democrats to dominate the country. As long as most Americans got more from the government than they paid in taxes the Democrats won elections. The Democrats need to do that again.

 

[Friends]

Are you suggesting as others have that Keynes works, and if FDR had only spent money as in a war the depression would have been cured?

These types really don't understand why their economic ideologies are contradictory and stupid; they just like repeating dumb arguments they read somewhere else, and have no idea what they're talking about and don't care.

Re Morgenthau, he was an Establishment banker and wouldn't be sympathetic to the millions of families who benefited from FDR's policies, and was completely dedicated to his class prejudices and beliefs. He wouldn't have cared at all if many more millions of working class types had died or lost their farms and they and their children starved to death on the side of a road or in an alley somewhere ,just as modern right wingers wouldn't . Fortunately FDR and many others did. Even the more intelligent sociopaths, like Joe Kennedy, knew better, and backed FDR.

Republicans frequently quote Morgenthau. I proved in my comment #19 that what he said was factually incorrect.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Hitler ended FDR's Depression

Hmm... Black Tuesday: October 29, 1929... Roosevelt's first Presidential race: November 8, 1932.

FDR musta had one a them O'bama teleprompter time machines that forced a depression on his predecessor. Three years before the election even happened.

What a guy.

FDR didn't have a Depression during his entire first 2 terms????

OK let's take this step by step....
Stock market crash: Fall of 1929.
Roosevelt elected: Fall of 1932 (inaugurated 1933). By which time the Depression was 3½ years old.

See if you can put these events in order. Take your time.

Um, OK. FDR still have the worst 2 terms in Presidential history. 14% Average unemployment. He had Hitlers conquest of France to thank for US finally dropping below 14%

Yabbut this, yabbut that, excuses excuses. The fact is the unemployment rate was around 25% when he came in so -- good luck selling this canard.

The overall course of the Depression in the United States, as reflected in per-capita GDP (average income per person)
shown in constant year 2000 dollars, plus some of the key events of the period

(Both graphs from here)
​

Some histories are easier to revise than others. Graphs tend to give you kind of an uphill climb.

You may now resume your "yabbut yabbut" excuses in the noble cause of Eliminationist partisanship.

You posted a chart showing that after 2 whole terms UE under FDR was 15%, and you call that success???????

 

[jwoodie]

FDR was a masterful politician who sweet talked the public through the Depression, thereby avoiding potentially massive civil/political unrest. He was also a great wartime cheerleader who let the military prosecute the war. However, he was also a gullible Soviet sympathizer who allowed the enslavement of Eastern Europe for the next 50 years.

 

[Pogo]

Hmm... Black Tuesday: October 29, 1929... Roosevelt's first Presidential race: November 8, 1932.

FDR musta had one a them O'bama teleprompter time machines that forced a depression on his predecessor. Three years before the election even happened.

What a guy.

FDR didn't have a Depression during his entire first 2 terms????

OK let's take this step by step....
Stock market crash: Fall of 1929.
Roosevelt elected: Fall of 1932 (inaugurated 1933). By which time the Depression was 3½ years old.

See if you can put these events in order. Take your time.

Um, OK. FDR still have the worst 2 terms in Presidential history. 14% Average unemployment. He had Hitlers conquest of France to thank for US finally dropping below 14%

Yabbut this, yabbut that, excuses excuses. The fact is the unemployment rate was around 25% when he came in so -- good luck selling this canard.

The overall course of the Depression in the United States, as reflected in per-capita GDP (average income per person)
shown in constant year 2000 dollars, plus some of the key events of the period

(Both graphs from here)
​

Some histories are easier to revise than others. Graphs tend to give you kind of an uphill climb.

You may now resume your "yabbut yabbut" excuses in the noble cause of Eliminationist partisanship.

You posted a chart showing that after 2 whole terms UE under FDR was 15%, and you call that success???????

You seem to have a bit of trouble with beginnings.
When you're starting at 25, 15 is nine less. You get that right?
Maybe not.

And the trend reverses dramatically. That's uh, the whole point of graphs.
This was the biggest economic crisis in modern history. They don't go away in a week. It's not like the POTUS can walk up to the Strategic Economy Reserves and open a valve. You get that, right?

Maybe not.

Some people, you hand 'em a million bucks and all they do is complain about the color of the money.... because it's always about "my politics team", never about "my country".

Sorry Revisionistas --- your Ministry of Truth is gonna have a tough row to hoe rewriting this to work the refs. After further review, the play stands as called.

Deal with it.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

FDR didn't have a Depression during his entire first 2 terms????

OK let's take this step by step....
Stock market crash: Fall of 1929.
Roosevelt elected: Fall of 1932 (inaugurated 1933). By which time the Depression was 3½ years old.

See if you can put these events in order. Take your time.

Um, OK. FDR still have the worst 2 terms in Presidential history. 14% Average unemployment. He had Hitlers conquest of France to thank for US finally dropping below 14%

Yabbut this, yabbut that, excuses excuses. The fact is the unemployment rate was around 25% when he came in so -- good luck selling this canard.

The overall course of the Depression in the United States, as reflected in per-capita GDP (average income per person)
shown in constant year 2000 dollars, plus some of the key events of the period

(Both graphs from here)
​

Some histories are easier to revise than others. Graphs tend to give you kind of an uphill climb.

You may now resume your "yabbut yabbut" excuses in the noble cause of Eliminationist partisanship.

You posted a chart showing that after 2 whole terms UE under FDR was 15%, and you call that success???????

You seem to have a bit of trouble with beginnings.
When you're starting at 25, 15 is nine less. You get that right?
Maybe not.

And the trend reverses dramatically. That's uh, the whole point of graphs.
This was the biggest economic crisis in modern history. They don't go away in a week. It's not like the POTUS can walk up to the Strategic Economy Reserves and open a valve. You get that, right?

Maybe not.

Some people, you hand 'em a million bucks and all they do is complain about the color of the money.... because it's always about "my politics team", never about "my country".

Sorry Revisionistas --- your Ministry of Truth is gonna have a tough row to hoe rewriting this to work the refs. After further review, the play stands as called.

Deal with it.

So all you have to show for 7 whole years of FDR's Jihad on the US economy is a 15% unemployment?

Without WWII, how far into the future would 15% unemployment have been the acceptable norm? 10 years? 20?

 

[Picaro]

The Depression in the real economy, as opposed to the Wall Street 'economy', began in 1926-1927. An interesting study is how much of the slow-down and following Depression was due to the stock boom sucking money out of real capital investments and businesses to chase easy and highly leveraged returns in the stocks and the call money markets. This has been the pattern in all of the 'booms' and the inevitable Depressions that follow them, including those of the last 40 odds years.

 

[longknife]

Did any of you live under the FDR administration?

Or is everyone spouting what so-called experts are saying?

I KNEW people who lived then and, to a person, they felt FDR was a tyrant who got the government involved in everything. Unemployment plummeted because so many people were working for the government!

Massive public works projects with so many alphabet names that it's nearly impossible to include in a single post.

Yes, public highways were improved.

Rural electrification resulted with many dams and generation plants built.

But, at what price.

Oh yes, a massive increase in jobs and production in the arms industry.

 

[regent]

OK let's take this step by step....
Stock market crash: Fall of 1929.
Roosevelt elected: Fall of 1932 (inaugurated 1933). By which time the Depression was 3½ years old.

See if you can put these events in order. Take your time.

Um, OK. FDR still have the worst 2 terms in Presidential history. 14% Average unemployment. He had Hitlers conquest of France to thank for US finally dropping below 14%

Yabbut this, yabbut that, excuses excuses. The fact is the unemployment rate was around 25% when he came in so -- good luck selling this canard.

The overall course of the Depression in the United States, as reflected in per-capita GDP (average income per person)
shown in constant year 2000 dollars, plus some of the key events of the period

(Both graphs from here)
​

Some histories are easier to revise than others. Graphs tend to give you kind of an uphill climb.

You may now resume your "yabbut yabbut" excuses in the noble cause of Eliminationist partisanship.

You posted a chart showing that after 2 whole terms UE under FDR was 15%, and you call that success???????

You seem to have a bit of trouble with beginnings.
When you're starting at 25, 15 is nine less. You get that right?
Maybe not.

And the trend reverses dramatically. That's uh, the whole point of graphs.
This was the biggest economic crisis in modern history. They don't go away in a week. It's not like the POTUS can walk up to the Strategic Economy Reserves and open a valve. You get that, right?

Maybe not.

Some people, you hand 'em a million bucks and all they do is complain about the color of the money.... because it's always about "my politics team", never about "my country".

Sorry Revisionistas --- your Ministry of Truth is gonna have a tough row to hoe rewriting this to work the refs. After further review, the play stands as called.

Deal with it.

So all you have to show for 7 whole years of FDR's Jihad on the US economy is a 15% unemployment?

Without WWII, how far into the future would 15% unemployment have been the acceptable norm? 10 years? 20?

Did any of you live under the FDR administration?

Or is everyone spouting what so-called experts are saying?

I KNEW people who lived then and, to a person, they felt FDR was a tyrant who got the government involved in everything. Unemployment plummeted because so many people were working for the government!

Massive public works projects with so many alphabet names that it's nearly impossible to include in a single post.

Yes, public highways were improved.

Rural electrification resulted with many dams and generation plants built.

But, at what price.

Oh yes, a massive increase in jobs and production in the arms industry.

Did any of you live under the FDR administration?

Or is everyone spouting what so-called experts are saying?

I KNEW people who lived then and, to a person, they felt FDR was a tyrant who got the government involved in everything. Unemployment plummeted because so many people were working for the government!

Massive public works projects with so many alphabet names that it's nearly impossible to include in a single post.

Yes, public highways were improved.

Rural electrification resulted with many dams and generation plants built.

But, at what price.

Oh yes, a massive increase in jobs and production in the arms industry.

I lived then and the people that lived then, voted for FDR four times, and Republicans in their zeal to blot out FDR made those four times a record. Historians that lived then voted FDR third greatest president.
What more could a president ask for the people voting for him four times and historians have never rated FDR below third greatest president. Some posters may not like FDR now but who cares.

fdd

 

[Picaro]

Ah .. now we're supposed to post all of our anecdotal stories we heard from somebody nobody else knows and pretend they mean something, and are refutations of something or other. I've talked with a lot of older people who lived through the Depression too, and the majority of them say they would have starved and their families broken up without programs like the CCC and others to give them and/or their teenagers jobs that sent money home, among other things. I also talked with a lot of descendants of the Okies who fled to California who explained to me exactly why the union movements took off, and how the same programs kept them alive as well.

 

[Picaro]

Naturally none of the so-called 'free market' types have been able to explain why all those wealthy people didn't rescue the economy they themselves crashed, despite having some 5 to 6 years to do so; instead they hired private armies and barricaded themselves on their estates and in their penthouses and sat around sniveling like whiney brats, demanding the government use the military to kill all those nasty proles with bad attitudes and for making scary faces at them.

I guess they meant 'everybody else' was supposed to bail them out and get the economy rolling again, and then they would jump in as soon as they could get 200% returns a year on their investments like they got in the 'good ole days', before they tanked the whole country, as they seem to think they were entitled to, and do today as well. Huge amounts of cash sitting around and doing nothing; apparently all those tax breaks aren't remotely working as claimed, except for the occasional overseas sweatshop 'investments', anyway.

 

[regent]

Naturally none of the so-called 'free market' types have been able to explain why all those wealthy people didn't rescue the economy they themselves crashed, despite having some 5 to 6 years to do so; instead they hired private armies and barricaded themselves on their estates and in their penthouses and sat around sniveling like whiney brats, demanding the government use the military to kill all those nasty proles with bad attitudes and for making scary faces at them.

I guess they meant 'everybody else' was supposed to bail them out and get the economy rolling again, and then they would jump in as soon as they could get 200% returns a year on their investments like they got in the 'good ole days', before they tanked the whole country, as they seem to think they were entitled to, and do today as well. Huge amounts of cash sitting around and doing nothing; apparently all those tax breaks aren't remotely working as claimed, except for the occasional overseas sweatshop 'investments', anyway.

As mentioned I lived through the Great Depression on the south side of Chicago, Englewood and the Yards, and nothing is more boring than depression stories unless it is WWII stories. But the one thing I have noticed is that history books ancedotes nothing can really recreate the period as the people that lived it experienced it. That is for any historical period. We have not yet found the secret of making history come alive or whatever. Fiction might come much closer but for a history book just to say people were hungry and scared just doesn't do it. Maybe it's not necessary but I feel we really miss the real history with our lack of convey the feelings of the people at the time.

 

[Camp]

Did any of you live under the FDR administration?

Or is everyone spouting what so-called experts are saying?

I KNEW people who lived then and, to a person, they felt FDR was a tyrant who got the government involved in everything. Unemployment plummeted because so many people were working for the government!

Massive public works projects with so many alphabet names that it's nearly impossible to include in a single post.

Yes, public highways were improved.

Rural electrification resulted with many dams and generation plants built.

But, at what price.

Oh yes, a massive increase in jobs and production in the arms industry.

Instead of asking at what price perhaps we should be asking at what profit to the nation. It's hard to imagine any American not being able to see or use one or more of the projects built during those alphabet soup programs days. Many are barely visible as small bridges made of stone that continue to see service on county roads and state highways. Many of the steel and concrete ones are still being used and the huge projects like the big twin span bridges are still being used. Add the thousands of Post Offices, civic centers that began as armories, town halls, etc. We can't afford to replace them. The investments in infrastructure has given us dividends for decades and will continue to do so far into the future.
High taxes caused the excessively wealthy to make huge contributions to non profits and charities that included not only scholarships to colleges, but a massive increase of construction on campuses as building were erected to make colleges bigger, better and able to educate larger numbers of students. Non profit hospitals were built and funded, museums were built and stocked and vast amounts of property were donated to become parks. City parks and huge state parks began to dot the landscape. The cost to the average citizen was accepting these things having names of the people who made them possible through their contributions.

 

[regent]

OK let's take this step by step....
Stock market crash: Fall of 1929.
Roosevelt elected: Fall of 1932 (inaugurated 1933). By which time the Depression was 3½ years old.

See if you can put these events in order. Take your time.

Um, OK. FDR still have the worst 2 terms in Presidential history. 14% Average unemployment. He had Hitlers conquest of France to thank for US finally dropping below 14%

Yabbut this, yabbut that, excuses excuses. The fact is the unemployment rate was around 25% when he came in so -- good luck selling this canard.

The overall course of the Depression in the United States, as reflected in per-capita GDP (average income per person)
shown in constant year 2000 dollars, plus some of the key events of the period

(Both graphs from here)
​

Some histories are easier to revise than others. Graphs tend to give you kind of an uphill climb.

You may now resume your "yabbut yabbut" excuses in the noble cause of Eliminationist partisanship.

You posted a chart showing that after 2 whole terms UE under FDR was 15%, and you call that success???????

You seem to have a bit of trouble with beginnings.
When you're starting at 25, 15 is nine less. You get that right?
Maybe not.

And the trend reverses dramatically. That's uh, the whole point of graphs.
This was the biggest economic crisis in modern history. They don't go away in a week. It's not like the POTUS can walk up to the Strategic Economy Reserves and open a valve. You get that, right?

Maybe not.

Some people, you hand 'em a million bucks and all they do is complain about the color of the money.... because it's always about "my politics team", never about "my country".

Sorry Revisionistas --- your Ministry of Truth is gonna have a tough row to hoe rewriting this to work the refs. After further review, the play stands as called.

Deal with it.

So all you have to show for 7 whole years of FDR's Jihad on the US economy is a 15% unemployment?

Without WWII, how far into the future would 15% unemployment have been the acceptable norm? 10 years? 20?

America had no revolution, no change in her economic system, no change in her political system, though there were calls for all. When the smoke cleared after WWII the nation was still intact and now a world power. A new president had taken over and all was done peacefully, The Civil War and many other events in America were greater threats, and for that we should thank FDR, and maybe that's why historians rate him so highly.

 

[jwoodie]

Geez, a lot of emotional investment in FDR. Some people people seem to think that winning four elections makes someone a great President. How about concealing terminal illness from the voters?

 

[Picaro]

Geez, a lot of emotional investment in FDR. Some people people seem to think that winning four elections makes someone a great President. How about concealing terminal illness from the voters?

Who keeps bringing up these FDR threads? It's obvious who has a lot of emotional investment in these threads, and it isn't who you hope it is.

 

[Camp]

Geez, a lot of emotional investment in FDR. Some people people seem to think that winning four elections makes someone a great President. How about concealing terminal illness from the voters?

The people who kept reelecting him thought he was great. That is why they kept reelecting him. They understood that he was transforming the American government from one that concentrated on serving the wealthy and big business to one that served the mass's. He laid down the foundation for creating the middle class. Every President, Republican and Democrat that followed him continued his concept and supported the transformation that FDR created until Reagan. Today's politics is all about retaining that concept and the transformation that occurred, or going back to the bad old days. It's a battle between the American style "aristocrats", the obscenely wealthy, big business leaders and the power elite vs. the mass's.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

"Nero was a fool and a megalomaniac, but a fool can also be charming and interesting. The thing he invented, which all demagogues after him repeated, was that he cherished the masses.' -- Andrea Carandini

FDR Cherished the toothless masses. He loved them, kept them unemployed and dependent on the government

 

[Camp]

"Nero was a fool and a megalomaniac, but a fool can also be charming and interesting. The thing he invented, which all demagogues after him repeated, was that he cherished the masses.' -- Andrea Carandini

FDR Cherished the toothless masses. He loved them, kept them unemployed and dependent on the government

Bullshit. Millions of American's like my grandfather learned valuable skills working on those FDR projects and programs. He learned the bricklayers trade and went on to build two three family homes in Queens, NY and financed a family farm on Long Island. He never received a dime of relief unless you count the pay he received while learning his trade.