Ron paul: Obama's goal is economic collapse

[tinylittlegnat]

Yeah, keep moving the goalposts.

as long as you ignore facts and logic

 

[FASCES]

was obama in the picture and did it have his signiture under it as if he made the che picture? sorry bad example try again

A T-shirt I saw that I would like to own...the famous Che picture only with him
as a skeleton and the words below are "Che is dead. Get over it "

 

[tinylittlegnat]

A T-shirt I saw that I would like to own...the famous Che picture only with him
as a skeleton and the words below are "Che is dead. Get over it "

not bad. check out www.tshirthell.com they got some horrible shirts there.

 

[KingOrfeo]

That's utter rubbish. FDR's New Deal was a miserable failure, and his policies accomplished nothing but to prolong the Depression.

Of course, my dear.

 

[Byron In Exile]

Of course, my dear.

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong... somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started... and an enormous debt to boot!" -- Treasury Secretary Henry Morganthau, May 1939

I think Morganthau probably knew a little more about it than Wikipedia.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

I think Morganthau probably knew a little more about it than Wikipedia.

Wikipedia cites a survey of contemporary historians and economists, who know more about it than Morgenthau did because they have the advantage of hindsight and documented results.

 

[mark_j]

The Democrats did not have war fever to back them up.

Too simple and it still does not address the nearly 10 years of effort. While there were many infrastructure projects that came out of the era it seems that it was really a very small impact on the overall economy. Sure there was a lot of modernization of the manufacturing capabilities and infrastructure. Sure they had the rural electrification programs to modernize farming. WPA, TVA, Hoover Dam, the taming of the Columbia river and all those other Government works projects. Great accomplishments to be sure but did it make a significant difference in the economy at the time? Locally, sure (in retrospect these ended up being very important, but only after manufacturing was ramped up to meet a significantly higher demand). When you look at the figures from the charts you linked, where was the big drop in unemployment? It wasn't until after 1939 (what happened in Poland that year on Sep 1?) that it even came close to pre-depression levels.

So why wouldn't the Democrats have the balls to do what you said they should have done being as they had the clear Congressional majorities? To be as simplistic as you are being I can give you the answer in two words.

POLITICAL SUICIDE

High government employment paid for by high taxes on the rich, ended the Depression.

Yeah, why did they enact all that and what were all those "Government Employees" doing?

They sure weren't making popsicles and they weren't selling Fords to the general population.

 

[Sonny_Bono]

That was his goal from the very beginning!

 

[Byron In Exile]

Wikipedia cites a survey of contemporary historians and economists, who know more about it than Morgenthau did because they have the advantage of hindsight and documented results.

They have the disadvantage of not living through it as Treasury Secretary every day for eight years.

Anyway, the economists in the "survey" seem to be about evenly split. Let's check out some recent cutting-edge research with "the advantage of hindsight and documented results" cited in your Wiki article...


FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate

By Meg Sullivan 8/10/2004


Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."

In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.

"President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible for the Depression by reducing prices and wages, and by extension reducing employment and demand for goods and services," said Cole, also a UCLA professor of economics. "So he came up with a recovery package that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies."

Using data collected in 1929 by the Conference Board and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Cole and Ohanian were able to establish average wages and prices across a range of industries just prior to the Depression. By adjusting for annual increases in productivity, they were able to use the 1929 benchmark to figure out what prices and wages would have been during every year of the Depression had Roosevelt's policies not gone into effect. They then compared those figures with actual prices and wages as reflected in the Conference Board data.

In the three years following the implementation of Roosevelt's policies, wages in 11 key industries averaged 25 percent higher than they otherwise would have done, the economists calculate. But unemployment was also 25 percent higher than it should have been, given gains in productivity.

Meanwhile, prices across 19 industries averaged 23 percent above where they should have been, given the state of the economy. With goods and services that much harder for consumers to afford, demand stalled and the gross national product floundered at 27 percent below where it otherwise might have been.

"High wages and high prices in an economic slump run contrary to everything we know about market forces in economic downturns," Ohanian said. "As we've seen in the past several years, salaries and prices fall when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal policies short-circuited the market's self-correcting forces."

The policies were contained in the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which exempted industries from antitrust prosecution if they agreed to enter into collective bargaining agreements that significantly raised wages. Because protection from antitrust prosecution all but ensured higher prices for goods and services, a wide range of industries took the bait, Cole and Ohanian found. By 1934 more than 500 industries, which accounted for nearly 80 percent of private, non-agricultural employment, had entered into the collective bargaining agreements called for under NIRA.

Cole and Ohanian calculate that NIRA and its aftermath account for 60 percent of the weak recovery. Without the policies, they contend that the Depression would have ended in 1936 instead of the year when they believe the slump actually ended: 1943.

Roosevelt's role in lifting the nation out of the Great Depression has been so revered that Time magazine readers cited it in 1999 when naming him the 20th century's second-most influential figure.

"This is exciting and valuable research," said Robert E. Lucas Jr., the 1995 Nobel Laureate in economics, and the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. "The prevention and cure of depressions is a central mission of macroeconomics, and if we can't understand what happened in the 1930s, how can we be sure it won't happen again?"

NIRA's role in prolonging the Depression has not been more closely scrutinized because the Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional within two years of its passage.

"Historians have assumed that the policies didn't have an impact because they were too short-lived, but the proof is in the pudding," Ohanian said. "We show that they really did artificially inflate wages and prices."

Even after being deemed unconstitutional, Roosevelt's anti-competition policies persisted — albeit under a different guise, the scholars found. Ohanian and Cole painstakingly documented the extent to which the Roosevelt administration looked the other way as industries once protected by NIRA continued to engage in price-fixing practices for four more years.

The number of antitrust cases brought by the Department of Justice fell from an average of 12.5 cases per year during the 1920s to an average of 6.5 cases per year from 1935 to 1938, the scholars found. Collusion had become so widespread that one Department of Interior official complained of receiving identical bids from a protected industry (steel) on 257 different occasions between mid-1935 and mid-1936. The bids were not only identical but also 50 percent higher than foreign steel prices. Without competition, wholesale prices remained inflated, averaging 14 percent higher than they would have been without the troublesome practices, the UCLA economists calculate.

NIRA's labor provisions, meanwhile, were strengthened in the National Relations Act, signed into law in 1935. As union membership doubled, so did labor's bargaining power, rising from 14 million strike days in 1936 to about 28 million in 1937. By 1939 wages in protected industries remained 24 percent to 33 percent above where they should have been, based on 1929 figures, Cole and Ohanian calculate. Unemployment persisted. By 1939 the U.S. unemployment rate was 17.2 percent, down somewhat from its 1933 peak of 24.9 percent but still remarkably high. By comparison, in May 2003, the unemployment rate of 6.1 percent was the highest in nine years.

Recovery came only after the Department of Justice dramatically stepped enforcement of antitrust cases nearly four-fold and organized labor suffered a string of setbacks, the economists found.

"The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes," Cole said. "Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened."

-UCLA-

LSMS368

 

[The_Trouvere]

They have the disadvantage of not living through it as Treasury Secretary every day for eight years.

Anyway, the economists in the "survey" seem to be about evenly split. Let's check out some recent cutting-edge research with "the advantage of hindsight and documented results" cited in your Wiki article...


FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate

By Meg Sullivan 8/10/2004


Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

etc., etc., etc.
blah blah blah

There is nothing new about these arguments. The Republicans presented them when Roosevelt was president. Fortunately, no one else cared. They reelected FDR three times.

 

[John Doe]

Ron Paul is totally batshit fucking loco.

 

[Byron In Exile]

There is nothing new about these arguments. The Republicans presented them when Roosevelt was president. Fortunately, no one else cared. They reelected FDR three times.

No, they didn't. Read the article.

And, oh, gee, Bush got reelected in 2004, that must mean he was right, huh?

Stop being a dimwit.

 

[The_Trouvere]

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong... somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started... and an enormous debt to boot!" -- Treasury Secretary Henry Morganthau, May 1939

I think Morganthau probably knew a little more about it than Wikipedia.

What Morganthau said was simply not true. In 1933, when Roosevelt was inaugurated, the unemployment rate was 24.9. By 1939 it had declined to 17.2%. In 1937 it had declined to 14.3%. The increase to 19.0% the next year has usually been attributed to cuts in government spending.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20030124ar03p1.htm

 

[The_Trouvere]

No, they didn't. Read the article.

And, oh, gee, Bush got reelected in 2004, that must mean he was right, huh?

Stop being a dimwit.

Excuse me, the Republicans did present arguments like that. Bush was reelected because people thought the mission was accomplished in Iraq, like he said. He would not have been reelected a second time. It is worth pointing out that in 2004 fewer people had jobs in the United States than in 2000, and that job creation during the Bush administration, even during the "good years" was dismal.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/

Economists cannot prove their theories with controlled, repeatable experiments, like chemists can. Roosevelt was reelected three times because for most Americans life began to improve almost as soon as he was inaugurated the first time. In 2008 most Americans were not better off than they were in 2000.

During the 1930's, like now, the GOP had nothing to offer but repeats of the policies that caused the problem.

 

[Songcatcher]

Who was Roosevelt's puppet masters?

They must have made tons of money out of WW II, Korean war, Vietnam, etc.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

The United States and Japan both had parallel lost decades following similar economic policies, but the proponents of governmental largess say, "It ain't so," and tout 14% unemployment as an improvement...

So, the bar has been set for Obama in their minds, anything under 15% is success and a simple sign that we're not racking up large enough deficits.

MEANWHILE, our currency is sinking and traders all over the world are beginning to look for other international means of exchange.

We're ALL Venezuelans now...

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Ron Paul is totally batshit fucking loco.

Ron Paul is merely a tad touched by the hand of Gawd. Most of his acolytes however, are totally batshit fucking loco...

What handle is Turd using now?

 

[Songcatcher]

I thought Roosevelt warned of military industrial complex.

Fucking double-speaking cocksucker.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

I thought Roosevelt warned of military industrial complex.

Fucking double-speaking cocksucker.

Eisenhower...

 

[firespin]

So, the bar has been set for Obama in their minds, anything under 15% is success and a simple sign that we're not racking up large enough deficits.

It would have been 19% without the stimulus.

The stimulus package is now the leading employer in the US, and in the top ten in most developed nations.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

I can't wait to get my stimulus IOU...!

 

[unregistered]

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Indeed, no other President had taken the occasion of a deep recession in order to create bigger governmental involvement in the lives of the citizens thusly creating a long-lasting depression...

 

[unregistered]