The Real Story About What Ended The Great Depression

[Camp]

History has recorded FDR bringing unemployment down from 25% to below 15% and as low as 9.6%. Revisionist have created a way to contest the accepted numbers by economist and historians for over 70 years. They have creatively and arbitrarily determined and decided that people who worked on government subsidized projects and programs were on relief and therefore actually unemployed, even though they were working at jobs and getting paid.

So you're applauding a 15% unemployment rate, and that after 7 years of a Progressive Jihad on the US Economy

You're saying a 15% unemployment after 7 years and 20% average over two whole terms is a success story

Is that correct?

I'm saying your numbers are distorted and outright bullshit. By 1936 Roosevelt had the unemployment down to about 9.6 to 13%. This during a global depression and private industry had no way or motivation to pull us out. If you are going to use revisionist crap put out by non historian sources, but instead propagated by rw conservative hacks on blogs and talk radio, you need to be able to back the garbage up.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

History has recorded FDR bringing unemployment down from 25% to below 15% and as low as 9.6%. Revisionist have created a way to contest the accepted numbers by economist and historians for over 70 years. They have creatively and arbitrarily determined and decided that people who worked on government subsidized projects and programs were on relief and therefore actually unemployed, even though they were working at jobs and getting paid.

So you're applauding a 15% unemployment rate, and that after 7 years of a Progressive Jihad on the US Economy

You're saying a 15% unemployment after 7 years and 20% average over two whole terms is a success story

Is that correct?

I'm saying your numbers are distorted and outright bullshit. By 1936 Roosevelt had the unemployment down to about 9.6 to 13%. This during a global depression and private industry had no way or motivation to pull us out. If you are going to use revisionist crap put out by non historian sources, but instead propagated by rw conservative hacks on blogs and talk radio, you need to be able to back the garbage up.

My numbers?

Those aren't "My numbers"!!!

Those are FDR's numbers and clearly his idea to centrally plan the US Economy was a total failure

Harding and Coolidge let the US Economy work itself out of a bad situation and in under 2 years, UE almost didn't exist

 

[bendog]

Is equating the recession of 1920 with 1928 now orthodoxy?

 

[Politico]

Still no explanations of why the Hoover admin and all the 'free market capitalists' who owned Wall Street didn't rescue America from the Depression. We'll wait for the excuses and nonsensical narratives; they're bound to be as hilarious as the silly attempts at demonizing FDR. As for Garner, he was a joke indeed; more on that later, maybe.

Life for most Americans kept getting worse under Hoover. Life for most Americans kept getting better under Roosevelt. That is why Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, and why he was reelected three times.

Is that what they're teaching in school now?

 

[pinqy]

History has recorded FDR bringing unemployment down from 25% to below 15% and as low as 9.6%. Revisionist have created a way to contest the accepted numbers by economist and historians for over 70 years. They have creatively and arbitrarily determined and decided that people who worked on government subsidized projects and programs were on relief and therefore actually unemployed, even though they were working at jobs and getting paid.

Unemployment was not calculated back then on a regular basis. There was the 1920 Census, the 1930 Census, a 1936 postcard survey on unemployment, and the 1940 Census. The monthly survey didn't start until 1942. The official numbers for unemployment before then were calculated by Stanley Lebergott, published in 1948 and have been adopted as official. He included those in works programs as unemployed. So it's not anything revisionist....the only official numbers included those on government works projects as unemployed.

 

[Friends]

FDR's huge deficit spending and constant raising of taxes of all sorts, DID NOT REDUCE UNEMPLOYMENT. It kept unemployment rates up.

From the time Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933 the unemployment rate made a steady decline, except for a year after 1937 when he made the mistake of reducing government spending and employment. When Roosevelt died in 1945 unemployment was 1.2 percent.

United States Unemployment Rate 1920 ndash 2013 Infoplease.com

 

[Friends]

Still no explanations of why the Hoover admin and all the 'free market capitalists' who owned Wall Street didn't rescue America from the Depression. We'll wait for the excuses and nonsensical narratives; they're bound to be as hilarious as the silly attempts at demonizing FDR. As for Garner, he was a joke indeed; more on that later, maybe.

Life for most Americans kept getting worse under Hoover. Life for most Americans kept getting better under Roosevelt. That is why Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, and why he was reelected three times.

Is that what they're teaching in school now?

That is what nearly everyone knows who is old enough to have talked to people who were alive back then.

 

[Friends]

History has recorded FDR bringing unemployment down from 25% to below 15% and as low as 9.6%. Revisionist have created a way to contest the accepted numbers by economist and historians for over 70 years. They have creatively and arbitrarily determined and decided that people who worked on government subsidized projects and programs were on relief and therefore actually unemployed, even though they were working at jobs and getting paid.

So you're applauding a 15% unemployment rate, and that after 7 years of a Progressive Jihad on the US Economy

You're saying a 15% unemployment after 7 years and 20% average over two whole terms is a success story

Is that correct?

That is certainly correct. during the early 1930's demand had stabilized at a permanently low level, so government spending and employment was needed to raise demand.

The reason unemployment remained above 10 percent as long as it did was because Congressional Republicans resisted the the massive government hiring and spending that was necessary to reduce unemployment. That came with the Second World War.

 

[Friends]

Still no explanations of why the Hoover admin and all the 'free market capitalists' who owned Wall Street didn't rescue America from the Depression. We'll wait for the excuses and nonsensical narratives; they're bound to be as hilarious as the silly attempts at demonizing FDR. As for Garner, he was a joke indeed; more on that later, maybe.

Hoover was a Statist like FDR. FDR took Hoover's bad ideas and put them on Steroids

Things got worse under Hoover. They got better under Roosevelt.

 

[Friends]

...As told by one who was there.

WWII ended the Depression.

Government spending and government employment paid for by very high taxes on the rich ended the depression. It did not have to be military spending and employment. It did have to be government spending and employment because the private sector was not hiring sufficiently.

 

[Picaro]

History has recorded FDR bringing unemployment down from 25% to below 15% and as low as 9.6%. Revisionist have created a way to contest the accepted numbers by economist and historians for over 70 years. They have creatively and arbitrarily determined and decided that people who worked on government subsidized projects and programs were on relief and therefore actually unemployed, even though they were working at jobs and getting paid.

So you're applauding a 15% unemployment rate, and that after 7 years of a Progressive Jihad on the US Economy

You're saying a 15% unemployment after 7 years and 20% average over two whole terms is a success story

Is that correct?

That is certainly correct. during the early 1930's demand had stabilized at a permanently low level, so government spending and employment was needed to raise demand.

The reason unemployment remained above 10 percent as long as it did was because Congressional Republicans resisted the the massive government hiring and spending that was necessary to reduce unemployment. That came with the Second World War.

I'll add that there was a sizable Congressional and Senate bloc of wealthy anti-Roosevelt Democrats hamstringing necessary legislation as well, not just Republicans.

 

[Picaro]

Is equating the recession of 1920 with 1928 now orthodoxy?

The slowdown in the economy and the rise in unemployment began in 1926-1927, as evidenced by the criteria used by the more sophisticated stock market operators of the day, which were the quarterly reports of national shipping activity by the railroads and shipping lines to stockholders, along with the withering of new construction, another key indicator. It's also easy to track the amount of ready money corporations funneled into the call loan money markets of the time as well as stock speculations; the stock bubble contributed to the decline in capital investment in the real economy, drawing money in for the easier and higher short term returns in the numerous pyramid schemes available. Much the same thing is going on today, which is why bubbles are always followed by busts. The larger the bubble, the worse the inevitable crash following.

At the time, the usual margin was around 10% of the stock price. Compare that to the last bubble, where the banks and speculators were leveraged at 35 to 50 times the appraised underlying asset values, which of course were themselves grossly inflated.

 

[gipper]

FDR's huge deficit spending and constant raising of taxes of all sorts, DID NOT REDUCE UNEMPLOYMENT. It kept unemployment rates up.

From the time Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933 the unemployment rate made a steady decline, except for a year after 1937 when he made the mistake of reducing government spending and employment. When Roosevelt died in 1945 unemployment was 1.2 percent.

United States Unemployment Rate 1920 ndash 2013 Infoplease.com

Oh please....unemployment was double digit for 10 years during FDR's reign of shit. And you think this is acceptable and even commendable.

FDR was not only Stalin's stooge, he was an economic ignoramus who prolonged the suffering until he forced a anti-war nation into war...by lying and deceiving.

Hoover, who intervened massively in the economy, never did so at the level FDR did. Yet the government run schools tell their pupils Hoover was a Laissez-faire president and a terrible leader, while claiming Stalin's stooge was GREAT!!!

CRAZY!!!

 

[Politico]

That is what nearly everyone knows who is old enough to have talked to people who were alive back then.

I talked to my many in extensive detail. But nice try.

 

[jasonnfree]

That is what nearly everyone knows who is old enough to have talked to people who were alive back then.

I talked to my many in extensive detail. But nice try.

As did I. We must have talked to different classes of people. Most of the working class and small business owners like my great grandfather that lost his mill during the depression, believed in FDR, Which is why he won the presidency four times. Of course Mitt Romney would say because of free stuff. How un American, some conservatives will say, stealing from billionaires through taxation to help people in their time of need.

 

[jasonnfree]

That is what nearly everyone knows who is old enough to have talked to people who were alive back then.

I talked to my many in extensive detail. But nice try.

As did I. We must have talked to different classes of people. Most of the working class and small business owners like my great grandfather that lost his mill during the depression, believed in FDR, which is why he won the presidency four times. Of course Mitt Romney would say because of free stuff. Free stuff, helping people in their time of need. Sure.

 

[Politico]

No we talked to the same people. Nice deflection. I did not argue that there are always clueless folks who vote for someone in office for the wrong reasons. I pointed out how revisionist history vs actual history works. The fact is all economic depressions begin to improve about six years after they start. So by the time the 1936 elections rolled around things naturally were getting better. And by the time the 1940 elections rolled around, with no limits in place and war on the horizon of course they elected him again. Same goes for the 1944 elections. People don't change leaders during wartime if they don't have to. So they elected him again. And subsequently because of the war the US went into a period prosperity which lasted for a decade and led to two Truman terms. The pathology is really quite simple.

 

[jasonnfree]

No we talked to the same people. Nice deflection. I did not argue that there are always clueless folks who vote for someone in office for the wrong reasons. I pointed out how revisionist history vs actual history works. The fact is all economic depressions begin to improve about six years after they start. So by the time the 1936 elections rolled around things naturally were getting better. And by the time the 1940 elections rolled around, with no limits in place and war on the horizon of course they elected him again. Same goes for the 1944 elections. People don't change leaders during wartime if they don't have to. So they elected him again. And subsequently because of the war the US went into a period prosperity which lasted for a decade and led to two Truman terms. The pathology is really quite simple.

So the people the people that voted FDR into office several times did it for the wrong reasons and were clueless I believe you are saying. Things would have gotten better even if republicans had stayed in office. Got it.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

History has recorded FDR bringing unemployment down from 25% to below 15% and as low as 9.6%. Revisionist have created a way to contest the accepted numbers by economist and historians for over 70 years. They have creatively and arbitrarily determined and decided that people who worked on government subsidized projects and programs were on relief and therefore actually unemployed, even though they were working at jobs and getting paid.

So you're applauding a 15% unemployment rate, and that after 7 years of a Progressive Jihad on the US Economy

You're saying a 15% unemployment after 7 years and 20% average over two whole terms is a success story

Is that correct?

That is certainly correct. during the early 1930's demand had stabilized at a permanently low level, so government spending and employment was needed to raise demand.

The reason unemployment remained above 10 percent as long as it did was because Congressional Republicans resisted the the massive government hiring and spending that was necessary to reduce unemployment. That came with the Second World War.

Congressional Republicans were a rounding error during FDR's jihad on the economy.

Stop lying

 

[jwoodie]

My take on the Great Depression is that it resulted from a "perfect storm" of downward business cycle trends. Hoover didn't do anything to create it and FDR's efforts were largely ineffectual. However, I wonder if his plethora of new government programs unknowingly prepared the country for a quick transition to a wartime economy?