The World FDR Inherited Thread

[Camp]

FDR extended the Depression years longer than it needed to last. I find it amusing how the left excoriates Hoover, yet canonizes FDR when he simply took Hoover's failed policies and extrapolated them to the extreme.

FDR, didn't follow Hoover's RFC, and rather than give me people money ala charity it was better they work, and better they work at fixing up America. So just agency WPA built 650,000 miles of new roads, 124,000 bridges, 18,000 parks and playgrounds, 125,000 public buildings including 41000 new schools and on and on. The banks, military, and most of America was involved in FDR's approach to the Great Depression, and maybe that's one reason for the historian's ratings and WWII was still coming.

The folks who claim FDR prolonged the depression do so by counting all the workers at the various government agencies that built all those buildings and roads and bridges as "unemployed" because they were collecting government checks.Actual unemployment, people who couldn't find work, dropped to below 10%. The people collecting checks for working to build American infrastructure did not consider themselves to be unemployed.

 

[Dante]

FDR extended the Depression years longer than it needed to last. I find it amusing how the left excoriates Hoover, yet canonizes FDR when he simply took Hoover's failed policies and extrapolated them to the extreme.

that's one theory by those looking back

 

[whitehall]

FDR took a downturn in the economy and turned it into a soup line, bodies in ditches full scale depression in eight years. It took the carnage of a World War to turn the economy around.

here we go with the bs

Hoover served one term. FDR ...duh

 

[regent]

The depression began one year after Hoover took office and Hoover spent the next three years telling America how prosperity was just around the corner and chickens were jumping into pots. By the time FDR was elected we had been mired in the depression for three years. Hoover was helpless and his response to loan money to business was ridiculous. Business needed buyers of its products not loans.
People went to banks to draw out their money to hide under the mattress, and many were too late, the banks that had used depositors money on the stock market were already closed and people lost it all. FDR closed the banks and the ones that were stable reopened and when FDR said it's ok to deposit, people brought the money back and deposited. That was just the opening of FDR's war on the depression.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Historians are either Communists or Communist supporters

 

[Dante]

whitehall the dope

FDR took a downturn in the economy and turned it into a soup line, bodies in ditches full scale depression in eight years. It took the carnage of a World War to turn the economy around.

here we go with the bs

Hoover served one term. FDR ...duh

America loved what he did for them -- exactly

 

[Dante]

Historians are either Communists or Communist supporters

Way to go Frank!

 

[regent]

FDR took a downturn in the economy and turned it into a soup line, bodies in ditches full scale depression in eight years. It took the carnage of a World War to turn the economy around.

here we go with the bs

Hoover served one term. FDR ...duh

Yep, Hoover served one term and the people refused to vote for Hoover again. But the people did vote for FDR, and then voted for FDR again, and then voted for FDR again and then voted for FDR again. Finally Republicans had to engineer an amendment to keep people from voting for Democrats more than twice.
In the end, historians rated FDR the greatest and the people did the same. Gotta hurt, and I can understand the Republican war on FDR, and their pitiful cries of FDR being a communist and not eating his veggies.

 

[Dante]

Good read:
Did you hear FDR prolonged the Great Depression?
Conservatives' newest talking point -- designed to stop Congress from passing an economic stimulus package -- is breathtaking.
David Sirota
Jan 2, 2009

Ummm … no.

On deeper examination, I discovered that the right bases its New Deal revisionism on the short-lived recession in a year straddling 1937 and 1938. But that was four years into Roosevelt’s term — four years marked by spectacular economic growth. Additionally, the fleeting decline happened not because of the New Deal’s spending programs, but because Roosevelt momentarily listened to conservatives and backed off them. As Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman notes, in 1937-38, FDR “was persuaded to balance the budget” and “cut spending and the economy went back down again.” Did you hear FDR prolonged the Great Depression - Salon.com

 

[Moonglow]

FDR took a downturn in the economy and turned it into a soup line, bodies in ditches full scale depression in eight years. It took the carnage of a World War to turn the economy around.

And Hoovervilles were a figment of our imagination as was the Bonus Army?

 

[regent]

FDR took a downturn in the economy and turned it into a soup line, bodies in ditches full scale depression in eight years. It took the carnage of a World War to turn the economy around.

And Hoovervilles were a figment of our imagination as was the Bonus Army?

Speaking of the bonus army is a story I like contrasting the Hoover and FDR administrations. Hoover sent MacArthur and a contingent of infantry and maybe some tanks to clear the bonus out their Hoovervilles. One or two veterans died and maybe a baby.
When the bonus army met again after the election, FDR sent Eleanor down to talk to the veterans, she had lunch with them, they sang a few WWI songs and Eleanor left.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

FDR took a bad situation and turned it into the worst economy in human history, eclipsing the 7 Biblical lean years. Hitler's conquest of France was the event that eventually stopped the FDR Depression

 

[bendog]

FDR extended the Depression years longer than it needed to last. I find it amusing how the left excoriates Hoover, yet canonizes FDR when he simply took Hoover's failed policies and extrapolated them to the extreme.

FDR, didn't follow Hoover's RFC, and rather than give me people money ala charity it was better they work, and better they work at fixing up America. So just agency WPA built 650,000 miles of new roads, 124,000 bridges, 18,000 parks and playgrounds, 125,000 public buildings including 41000 new schools and on and on. The banks, military, and most of America was involved in FDR's approach to the Great Depression, and maybe that's one reason for the historian's ratings and WWII was still coming.

The folks who claim FDR prolonged the depression do so by counting all the workers at the various government agencies that built all those buildings and roads and bridges as "unemployed" because they were collecting government checks.Actual unemployment, people who couldn't find work, dropped to below 10%. The people collecting checks for working to build American infrastructure did not consider themselves to be unemployed.

I partially agree. First, those who claim FDR prolonged the depression are doing so from an ideological perspective. That is to say that the opposite result cannot be true because it is ideologically unacceptable. That is aimed directly at Cole and Ohanian, whose paper is the genesis for the criticism. Their ideological aim was to downplay the role in increasing aggregate demand affecting increasing gnp.

Misrepresenting the Recovery from the Great Depression Uneasy Money
Glasner's criticism of Cole and Ohanian is probably the clearest, but certainly not the last. Glasner doesn't dispute the notion that FDR's acceptance of monopolies and artificial inflation of prices and wages with the NIRA curtailed the recovery. But Glasner destroyed Cole and Ohanian's criticism of Friedman and how FDR abandoning the gold standard halted deflation. Friedman has a beautiful clip on you tube illustrating the gold standard's role in the great depression.

If you really want to see how ideologically jaded Cole and Ohanian are look at their comparision of US growth to intl growth in their fed paper.

http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/qr/qr2311.pdf
The fact is that no economy recovered until it was nationalized. They're skewing the data by comparing the US economy to economies that were nationalized faster.

But the bottom line, as Glasner posts, is that economic policy works "for good an ill." And the reality is that in 1932 there was no strong central bank and no consensus amongst the economic powers about a unified monetarist response.

 

[Dante]

FDR took a bad situation and turned it into the worst economy in human history, eclipsing the 7 Biblical lean years. Hitler's conquest of France was the event that eventually stopped the FDR Depression

keep ignoring the facts: Did you hear FDR prolonged the Great Depression - Salon.com

 

[Dante]

FDR extended the Depression years longer than it needed to last. I find it amusing how the left excoriates Hoover, yet canonizes FDR when he simply took Hoover's failed policies and extrapolated them to the extreme.

FDR, didn't follow Hoover's RFC, and rather than give me people money ala charity it was better they work, and better they work at fixing up America. So just agency WPA built 650,000 miles of new roads, 124,000 bridges, 18,000 parks and playgrounds, 125,000 public buildings including 41000 new schools and on and on. The banks, military, and most of America was involved in FDR's approach to the Great Depression, and maybe that's one reason for the historian's ratings and WWII was still coming.

The folks who claim FDR prolonged the depression do so by counting all the workers at the various government agencies that built all those buildings and roads and bridges as "unemployed" because they were collecting government checks.Actual unemployment, people who couldn't find work, dropped to below 10%. The people collecting checks for working to build American infrastructure did not consider themselves to be unemployed.

I partially agree. First, those who claim FDR prolonged the depression are doing so from an ideological perspective. That is to say that the opposite result cannot be true because it is ideologically unacceptable. That is aimed directly at Cole and Ohanian, whose paper is the genesis for the criticism. Their ideological aim was to downplay the role in increasing aggregate demand affecting increasing gnp.

Misrepresenting the Recovery from the Great Depression Uneasy Money
Glasner's criticism of Cole and Ohanian is probably the clearest, but certainly not the last. Glasner doesn't dispute the notion that FDR's acceptance of monopolies and artificial inflation of prices and wages with the NIRA curtailed the recovery. But Glasner destroyed Cole and Ohanian's criticism of Friedman and how FDR abandoning the gold standard halted deflation. Friedman has a beautiful clip on you tube illustrating the gold standard's role in the great depression.

If you really want to see how ideologically jaded Cole and Ohanian are look at their comparision of US growth to intl growth in their fed paper.

http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/qr/qr2311.pdf
The fact is that no economy recovered until it was nationalized. They're skewing the data by comparing the US economy to economies that were nationalized faster.

But the bottom line, as Glasner posts, is that economic policy works "for good an ill." And the reality is that in 1932 there was no strong central bank and no consensus amongst the economic powers about a unified monetarist response.

Did you hear FDR prolonged the Great Depression - Salon.com yep

 

[CrusaderFrank]

FDR Averaged 20% unemployment from his inauguration in 1933 until Hitler conquered France in 1940

2 terms of Fail

 

[bendog]

FDR extended the Depression years longer than it needed to last. I find it amusing how the left excoriates Hoover, yet canonizes FDR when he simply took Hoover's failed policies and extrapolated them to the extreme.

FDR, didn't follow Hoover's RFC, and rather than give me people money ala charity it was better they work, and better they work at fixing up America. So just agency WPA built 650,000 miles of new roads, 124,000 bridges, 18,000 parks and playgrounds, 125,000 public buildings including 41000 new schools and on and on. The banks, military, and most of America was involved in FDR's approach to the Great Depression, and maybe that's one reason for the historian's ratings and WWII was still coming.

The folks who claim FDR prolonged the depression do so by counting all the workers at the various government agencies that built all those buildings and roads and bridges as "unemployed" because they were collecting government checks.Actual unemployment, people who couldn't find work, dropped to below 10%. The people collecting checks for working to build American infrastructure did not consider themselves to be unemployed.

I partially agree. First, those who claim FDR prolonged the depression are doing so from an ideological perspective. That is to say that the opposite result cannot be true because it is ideologically unacceptable. That is aimed directly at Cole and Ohanian, whose paper is the genesis for the criticism. Their ideological aim was to downplay the role in increasing aggregate demand affecting increasing gnp.

Misrepresenting the Recovery from the Great Depression Uneasy Money
Glasner's criticism of Cole and Ohanian is probably the clearest, but certainly not the last. Glasner doesn't dispute the notion that FDR's acceptance of monopolies and artificial inflation of prices and wages with the NIRA curtailed the recovery. But Glasner destroyed Cole and Ohanian's criticism of Friedman and how FDR abandoning the gold standard halted deflation. Friedman has a beautiful clip on you tube illustrating the gold standard's role in the great depression.

If you really want to see how ideologically jaded Cole and Ohanian are look at their comparision of US growth to intl growth in their fed paper.

http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/qr/qr2311.pdf
The fact is that no economy recovered until it was nationalized. They're skewing the data by comparing the US economy to economies that were nationalized faster.

But the bottom line, as Glasner posts, is that economic policy works "for good an ill." And the reality is that in 1932 there was no strong central bank and no consensus amongst the economic powers about a unified monetarist response.

Did you hear FDR prolonged the Great Depression - Salon.com yep

No policy is 100% good, and few 100% bad (Stalin, Mao and Hitler maybe). But I believe the consensus was wage price controls of the NIRA were harmful. I seem to recall they didn't work so good with inflation either when Nixon and Ford were presidents. FDR got us off the gold standard, and as you link provides, we nearly simultaneously entered the two fastest years of econ growth of the 20th century. Reagan and W proved that spending a hell of lot more govt money than taxes can stimulate the economy. (-:

 

[Dante]

FDR extended the Depression years longer than it needed to last. I find it amusing how the left excoriates Hoover, yet canonizes FDR when he simply took Hoover's failed policies and extrapolated them to the extreme.

FDR, didn't follow Hoover's RFC, and rather than give me people money ala charity it was better they work, and better they work at fixing up America. So just agency WPA built 650,000 miles of new roads, 124,000 bridges, 18,000 parks and playgrounds, 125,000 public buildings including 41000 new schools and on and on. The banks, military, and most of America was involved in FDR's approach to the Great Depression, and maybe that's one reason for the historian's ratings and WWII was still coming.

The folks who claim FDR prolonged the depression do so by counting all the workers at the various government agencies that built all those buildings and roads and bridges as "unemployed" because they were collecting government checks.Actual unemployment, people who couldn't find work, dropped to below 10%. The people collecting checks for working to build American infrastructure did not consider themselves to be unemployed.

I partially agree. First, those who claim FDR prolonged the depression are doing so from an ideological perspective. That is to say that the opposite result cannot be true because it is ideologically unacceptable. That is aimed directly at Cole and Ohanian, whose paper is the genesis for the criticism. Their ideological aim was to downplay the role in increasing aggregate demand affecting increasing gnp.

Misrepresenting the Recovery from the Great Depression Uneasy Money
Glasner's criticism of Cole and Ohanian is probably the clearest, but certainly not the last. Glasner doesn't dispute the notion that FDR's acceptance of monopolies and artificial inflation of prices and wages with the NIRA curtailed the recovery. But Glasner destroyed Cole and Ohanian's criticism of Friedman and how FDR abandoning the gold standard halted deflation. Friedman has a beautiful clip on you tube illustrating the gold standard's role in the great depression.

If you really want to see how ideologically jaded Cole and Ohanian are look at their comparision of US growth to intl growth in their fed paper.

http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/qr/qr2311.pdf
The fact is that no economy recovered until it was nationalized. They're skewing the data by comparing the US economy to economies that were nationalized faster.

But the bottom line, as Glasner posts, is that economic policy works "for good an ill." And the reality is that in 1932 there was no strong central bank and no consensus amongst the economic powers about a unified monetarist response.

Did you hear FDR prolonged the Great Depression - Salon.com yep

No policy is 100% good, and few 100% bad (Stalin, Mao and Hitler maybe). But I believe the consensus was wage price controls of the NIRA were harmful. I seem to recall they didn't work so good with inflation either when Nixon and Ford were presidents. FDR got us off the gold standard, and as you link provides, we nearly simultaneously entered the two fastest years of econ growth of the 20th century. Reagan and W proved that spending a hell of lot more govt money than taxes can stimulate the economy. (-:

long term versus short run, macro versus micro economic theory, partisan bickering, revisionist history it all plays into it. Facts and data are not disputed. What is disputed is how they are being used and for what reason such as furthering an agenda

 

[bendog]

Well, I find it really objectionable when people who are paid to be economists pursue an agenda to say increasing aggregate demand does not increase gnp and ultimately wages. Intentionally misleading people is not OK. Especially when it's misleading people into believing something they want to believe for emotional reasons, be that "democrats really don't want to help people like me" or "the US really wants to destroy Russia" or "White America owes individual black people some economic outcome."

I'd accept that of Obama's stimulus, the effects of direct transfer by the feds to the State's to keep Medicaid and education programs going, when state revenues decreased so the State's couldn't spend the match to keep the federal money, and unemployment insurance are preferable to govt going out and hiring guys off the street to build dog parks and "winterize" buildings. Republicans generally go along with the former but not the latter .. unless its a military buildup or George W Bush.

But it's misleading to say FDR prolonged the recession by seven years, when the data shows that nationalizing failed banks and getting off the gold standard stabilized both having easy credit available and an expanding money supply, increasing gnp, and without Roosevelt and clinging to the ideas of Mellon and Coolidge that wouldn't happen. Without the FIRA, the recession might have ended sooner, and maybe the double dip would have been avoided .... maybe not, because maybe curtailing increasing aggregate demand with spending would still have been too much a sea anchor and the improving economy. And to mislead people because some economists don't like the Obama stimulus so that they get a fundamental misapprehension of macroeconomics is something that deserves a kick in the butt.

 

[Dante]

bendog what do you think of ideological arguments that JFK's cuts make him more a conservative than a liberal, when JFK's cuts were addressing demand side and not supply side?