Where has austerity been successful?

[TexasWife25]

I'm always seeing the RW tout out austerity as the answer to the US recession. However the daily headlines seems to suggest that it's an utter failure. Has it succeeded anywhere?

 

[richard_daily]

I'm always seeing the RW tout out austerity as the answer to the US recession. However the daily headlines seems to suggest that it's an utter failure. Has it succeeded anywhere?

It succeeds for the rich... not so much for the rest of the populace.

 

[islandman]

I'm always seeing the RW tout out austerity as the answer to the US recession. However the daily headlines seems to suggest that it's an utter failure. Has it succeeded anywhere?

South Korea and Indonesia following the '97 Asian financial crisis.

 

[Bert Notorius]

The Amish love it.

 

[coachdb18]

I'm always seeing the RW tout out austerity as the answer to the US recession. However the daily headlines seems to suggest that it's an utter failure. Has it succeeded anywhere?

the average American household. The MSM can be counted on to espouse more spending...and I'm always intrigued when I hear that our debt is $16T, and the answer is...[drum roll please] MORE SPENDING! Why on Earth, if 'more spending' is the answer, didn't the first $15.5T in spending make us all rich as fuck?

 

[TexasWife25]

the average American household

I agree, but a government has little in common with an individual's finances.

I'm honestly curious, what countries, that are comparable to the USA ,has it succeeded in pulling out of a depression?

 

[coachdb18]

I agree, but a government has little in common with an individual's finances.

I'm honestly curious, what countries, that are comparable to the USA ,has it succeeded in pulling out of a depression?

So far in human history, it's not the usual solution.. most countries who overspend and end up with riotous populations, hyperinflation and out of control spending resort to war.... like FDR did in WWII.

Current government has little in common with the individual household, true enough, and that is at the core of the problem. Inability to distinguish between wants and needs is central to insolvency in any context.

 

[mediocre]

So far in human history, it's not the usual solution.. most countries who overspend and end up with riotous populations, hyperinflation and out of control spending resort to war.... like FDR did in WWII.

Right. FDR started WWII. Eyeroll.

 

[TexasWife25]

South Korea and Indonesia following the '97 Asian financial crisis.

Did a quick google search, not finding much on the '97 SK austerity measures. As I was in elementary school at the time I don't know a lot about it.

 

[coachdb18]

Right. FDR started WWII. Eyeroll.

After a dozen years of failed economic policy, when most other nations had long since recovered, the option for war was one FDR needed badly, and set up the American people to participate in it, not so much because we were altruistic, as it was economic. FDR pushed Japan to attack, and withheld the known and decoded plan of attack from commanders at Pearl Harbor. He needed the trip wire to gain involvement.

 

[mediocre]

After a dozen years of failed economic policy, when most other nations had long since recovered, the option for war was one FDR needed badly, and set up the American people to participate in it, not so much because we were altruistic, as it was economic. FDR pushed Japan to attack, and withheld the known and decoded plan of attack from commanders at Pearl Harbor. He needed the trip wire to gain involvement.

Good lord you are so wrong.

 

[coachdb18]

Good lord you are so wrong.

in part...

24 September 1941, the " bomb plot" message in J-19 code from Japan Naval Intelligence to Japan' s consul general in Honolulu requesting grid of exact locations of ships pinpointed for the benefit of bombardiers and torpedo pilots was deciphered. There was no reason to know the EXACT location of ships in harbor, unless to attack them - it was a dead giveaway. Chief of War Plans Turner and Chief of Naval Operations Stark repeatedly kept it and warnings based on it prepared by Safford and others from being passed to Hawaii. The chief of Naval Intelligence Captain Kirk was replaced because he insisted on warning HI. It was lack of information like this that lead to the exoneration of the Hawaii commanders and the blaming of Washington for unpreparedness for the attack by the Army Board and Navy Court. At no time did the Japanese ever ask for a similar bomb plot for any other American military installation. Why the Roosevelt administration allowed flagrant Japanese spying on PH has never been explained, but they blocked 2 Congressional investigations in the fall of 1941 to allow it to continue. The bomb plots were addressed to "Chief of 3rd Bureau, Naval General Staff", marked Secret Intelligence message, and given special serial numbers, so their significance couldn't be missed. There were about 95 ships in port. The text was:

"Strictly secret.

"Henceforth, we would like to have you make reports concerning vessels
along the following lines insofar as possible:

"1. The waters (of Pearl Harbor) are to be divided roughly into five
subareas (We have no objections to your abbreviating as much as you
like.)

"Area A. Waters between Ford Island and the Arsenal.
"Area B. Waters adjacent to the Island south and west of Ford Island.
(This area is on the opposite side of the Island from Area A.)
"Area C. East Loch.
"Area D. Middle Loch.
"Area E. West Loch and the communication water routes.

"2. With regard to warships and aircraft carriers, we would like to have
you report on those at anchor (these are not so important) tied up at
wharves, buoys and in docks. (Designate types and classes briefly. If
possible we would like to have you make mention of the fact when
there are two or more vessels along side the same wharf.)"

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/pearl/www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/pearl.html

 

[bra_man69]

I'm always seeing the RW tout out austerity as the answer to the US recession. However the daily headlines seems to suggest that it's an utter failure. Has it succeeded anywhere?

You can't say it's a failure because it's not being done.
The government hasn't lowered spending.
One example of austerity that was successful 1949 after ww2

 

[KingOrfeo]

So far in human history, it's not the usual solution.. most countries who overspend and end up with riotous populations, hyperinflation and out of control spending resort to war.... like FDR did in WWII.

Did you get that revisionist bullshit from uberasshole Pat Buchanan?

 

[TexasWife25]

You can't say it's a failure because it's not being done.
The government hasn't lowered spending.
One example of austerity that was successful 1949 after ww2

Google "Failed austerity"

It has been tried, in other countires, and it hasn't been a success.

 

[KingOrfeo]

After a dozen years of failed economic policy, when most other nations had long since recovered, the option for war was one FDR needed badly, and set up the American people to participate in it, not so much because we were altruistic, as it was economic. FDR pushed Japan to attack, and withheld the known and decoded plan of attack from commanders at Pearl Harbor. He needed the trip wire to gain involvement.

More bullshit.

Lead-up to the attack

FDR wanted war with Japan/Germany. He had been planning it all along.

This point is actually a recycled criticism of FDR from the days he was actually in office. There was a strongly isolationist atmosphere in the US due to disillusionment with World War I and the Great Depression. Young adults of the Roaring Twenties were referred to as "The Lost Generation." With the economic collapse in 1929, people were far more worried about the state of their own country than international affairs. The Old Right, "Taft Republicans," and Republicans in general were hard-line isolationists. Conspiracy theorists often like to throw out quotes by FDR's opposition painting him as a warmonger.

However, FDR's arms build-up enjoyed bi-partisan support. The Army was so poor it was training its soldiers with wooden guns during the Depression. FDR was a Wilsonian and supporter of free trade, and so clearly came down on the side of the Allies with policies such as the Lend-Lease Act and the Four Freedoms. However, his stated policy was "All aid short of war" and had issued memos to the military making it known that they should not attempt to engage in any offensive action. Furthermore, FDR was far more concerned with Germany than Japan. This is similar to the Truthers who cite Project for a New American Century documents. It's merely circumstantial evidence, not definitive proof.


There were clear signs in radio transmissions intercepted by intelligence.

This ignores the signal-to-noise ratio in the intelligence. Most messages were vague or not fully decoded and the ones that were more explicit were awash in a much larger sea of intelligence stating the opposite or having nothing to do with Pearl Harbor. There were also similar problems in intelligence collection to the ones that happened pre-9/11: Oftentimes, low-level intelligence officers would decode reports and then file them away in some dusty cabinet, never to be seen again. Communication between agencies wasn't perfect, or even that good, so a full picture of what the intelligence suggested never emerged. If anything, these conspiracy theories are a good argument for streamlining intelligence rather than arguments for a real conspiracy.

There is also the fact that intelligence gathered the week of the attack suggested that Japanese forces were most likely moving toward Thailand or Malaysia in that time frame. The Navy's phone taps in the Japanese consulate were found and removed about a week before the attack as well.


The McCollum memo, outlining a strategy in the Pacific, proves war was the goal.

More circumstantial evidence. FDR, as well as his military advisors and naval officers in the Pacific, were wary of the growing Japanese empire and the possibility that it could strike the US. Every country draws up war plans for preparation for vast numbers of situations that may never occur. This sort of thing isn't unique to the run-up to Pearl Harbor.[1] The memo itself, however, was not a blueprint for all-out war, but aimed at containment of Japan (though it does make a brief mention of provocation). In addition, it never went all the way up the chain of command to Roosevelt himself.


December 7

A Japanese midget submarine was sunk before the bombing began.

This is an argument for incompetence rather than conspiracy. If FDR knew the attack was coming but the Navy didn't, this tells us nothing. If FDR knew it and had informed Navy higher-ups to ignore it, then we're getting into vast conspiracy territory and assume that none of the informed Naval officers ever squealed, even in memoirs later in life. If everyone knew about, it's an even more vast conspiracy and it wouldn't make much sense to fire on the sub if they wanted Pearl Harbor to be attacked. What actually happened was that one of the officers was informed of the incident and took his men off their posts to breakfast. In addition, the ship that reported the incident sent a message saying it had attacked a sub, not sunk it.


Three aircraft carriers were out of port on war games. They obviously did this to save the carriers.

The thing is, battleships were considered of primary importance in those days as carriers were untested weapons of war up to that point. If this were a conspiracy, letting the enemy take out such a huge portion of your fleet, even sans the three carriers, ranks as a massive failure at best and batshit crazy at worst. In addition, (if it were a conspiracy) wouldn't it have been better to launch a counter-attack just as Japanese forced were about to hit Pearl Harbor? That way, it would still look like an attack on the US but the fighters and warships could be saved while the Japanese would be handed a defeat in the first battle of the war. What's more is that one of the carriers, Enterprise, was actually scheduled to be in port on Dec. 7 but delayed in getting back, making this point even more nonsensical.


The planes were sitting ducks outside of their hangars. They left them out in the open intentionally.

The fighters were actually sitting on the tarmac outside the hangars to prevent an attack. Some of the Naval commanders were afraid of saboteurs breaking into the hangars and messing with the planes, so they left them out in the open.


Japanese planes picked up on radar were ignored.

The enlisted men who were stationed at Opana Point, where the Japanese squadrons were detected, were fresh recruits who had never used the equipment before, which itself was still under construction. Conspiracy theorists claim that the admiral in charge, Adm. Kimmel, ignored the transmission. In reality, it reached a lieutenant at Pearl Harbor, who mistook them for a squadron of B-17 bombers scheduled to arrive in the morning. Kimmel was never made aware of this. In addition, even if they were identified correctly, it's unclear if the naval base would have had sufficient time for preparations to fully fight off the attack.


The Flip Side

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz made a Commencement Address at Michie Stadium, West Point, New York on Saturday, June 02, 2001. In this address, he states "This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of a military disaster whose name has become synonymous with surprise—the attack on Pearl Harbor. Interestingly, that "surprise attack" was preceded by an astonishing number of unheeded warnings and missed signals. Intelligence reports warned of "a surprise move in any direction," but this made the Army commander in Honolulu think of sabotage, not attack. People were reading newspapers in Hawaii that cited promising reports about intensive Japanese diplomatic efforts, unaware that these were merely a charade. An ultra-secret code-breaking operation, one of the most remarkable achievements in American intelligence history, an operation called "Magic," had unlocked the most private Japanese communications, but the operation was considered so secret and so vulnerable to compromise that the distribution of its product was restricted to the point that our field commanders didn’t make the "need-to-know" list. And at 7 a.m. on December 7th, at Opana radar station, two privates detected what they called "something completely out of the ordinary." In fact, it was so out of the ordinary that the inexperienced watch officer assumed it must be friendly airplanes and told them to just forget about it." This speech is archived by the United States Department of Defense website, lending it more credibility.[2]


Vastness of the conspiracy

Most versions of the theory would implicate a good chunk of the Pacific fleet's chain of command, up to and including, of course, the president himself. The higher-ups stationed at Pearl Harbor would not only have to put their men's life on the line, but also their own. And all without any of them letting anything leak, speaking up about it later, or objecting that the idea would be completely bonkers. This would be truly impressive considering the biggest conspiracy committed by the executive in American history was foiled by some fools who failed to tape over a door lock the right way.


Origins

The conspiracy theory originated during World War II among members of the America First Committee, something of an alliance of far left (mostly socialists) and far right pacifists and isolationists. The first work to posit the theory was a 1944 pamphlet by John T. Flynn, a journalist and head of the New York Chapter of America First.[3] It has seen a revival in recent years by 9/11 truthers attempting to use the "FDR knew" canard as precedent for 9/11 being a false flag operation.

 

[coachdb18]

Did you get that revisionist bullshit from uberasshole Pat Buchanan?

You don't honestly believe Obama is spending so much time and money attacking every country in alphabetical order because he's wanting to make them like us, do you? It's war for an economic recovery he needs badly... he needs the wars to generate a need... Bush was no better.

 

[bra_man69]

Google "Failed austerity"

It has been tried, in other countires, and it hasn't been a success.

I don't care about other countries.
you asked a question I answered your question.

I can't help if Spain are Greece want to borrow money they don't have to pay for there government services and not cutting them back.

 

[trysail]

I'm always seeing the RW tout out austerity as the answer to the US recession. However the daily headlines seems to suggest that it's an utter failure. Has it succeeded anywhere?

Only through most of recorded history.

 

[trysail]

It's called the business cycle, folks. Every so often, the bankers lose their marbles and become indistinguishable from lemmings. It is, in part, a generational phenomena— if you've never had the "pleasure" of attempting to collect a bad loan, you're clueless. A generational cohort of bankers never learns until they've gone through that kind of cauterization. Every business cycle differs in some way from its predecessors but cycles themselves are as predictable as sunrise and sunset.

"Any idiot can lend money..., the hard part is getting it back."
—It's true and if you've never done it, you haven't got any idea, either.

Periodically, entire populations loses their collective mind and joins in idiotic speculative frenzy; Keynes called it "animal spirits."

Government regulation and intervention have NEVER prevented bubbles and the operation of the business cycle. The collapse of economic bubbles has always been followed by false prophets and manipulative opportunists promoting painless quack remedies. The mountebanks never fail to claim the efficacy of their solutions when recoveries occur— as free market economies inevitably do— after the excesses that created the bubbles are purged naturally by operation of markets. The promoters of the simple fixes are as dishonest as the first set of schemers— merely another set in a long line of charlatans, foolish dreamers and would-be dictators.

In the latest episode, demagogues railed and browbeat and threatened and harangued and strong-armed and bullied— anybody with a pulse has a god-given right to a mortgage. Bankers lost their minds and "bought" their own pitches. Greenspan lowered rates to irresponsible and unconscionably absurd levels— all in the name of a quick and pain-free solution to the tech-bubble-insanity and 9/11. The media whooped and hollared about how everybody was getting rich flipping houses— and, yes, there was fraud; there always was and always will be when bubbles occur. Gurus proclaimed that residential real estate prices never decline. Result: the lemmings drank the Kool-Aid and produced another old-fashioned bubble— just like the tech stock insanity of 1997-2000, just like the commercial real estate madness of 1986-1989, just like the Nifty Fifty of 1966-1972, just like the conglomerate madness of 1966-1968, just like the South Seas bubble of the 1720s, just like the Tulip Bulb insanity of 1636.

The business cycle is and always will be. If you believe otherwise, I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_2001
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973–1974_stock_market_crash
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_1958
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_1953
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_1937
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Panic_of_1907
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1890
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1884
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1873
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1866
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1857
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1847
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1837
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1825
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Panic_of_1819
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_seas_bubble
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Scheme
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_bubble

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_Business_Cycle_Theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cycle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds

 

[coachdb18]

Additionally, among FDR's chief strategists and formers of the planning leading to the war with Japan was Josephus Daniels, who was the Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson, anti-Japanese, and a loyal and trusted member of FDR's chief advisors. Rewarded with an ambassadorship to Mexico, Daniels had also been the leader of the insurrection known as the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898, in which Daniels and his fellow Democrats lynched and/or shot the sitting Republican government of the state of North Carolina, installing Democrats in what is now infamous for being the only successful coup of a seated US government in American history. He also succeeded in being party to the establishment of the Jim Crow laws, and was an avid pro-slavery segregationist.

The Raleigh News and Observer, the local newspaper in Raleigh, has since made a full study on Daniels and his paper, (AKA The Red Rooster), confessing and apologizing for the deeds of Daniels. FDR knew all of this, regardless.

 

[Sean Renaud]

So far in human history, it's not the usual solution.. most countries who overspend and end up with riotous populations, hyperinflation and out of control spending resort to war.... like FDR did in WWII.

Current government has little in common with the individual household, true enough, and that is at the core of the problem. Inability to distinguish between wants and needs is central to insolvency in any context.

Actually in American history its the usual solution and the one we've employed during every recession except this one. Following the Great Depression we got the New Deal. Which we are still reaping the rewards of to this day. The programs overall were so popular with the American people that FDR got elected a record four times. The programs created then (that are still up and running) are so popular that the Tea party defends them.

Following the Carter Recession Reagan came along and roughly doubled the size of the government. It was military spending but spending none the less.

The Bush Recession also saw, you guessed it rapidly expanding government jobs.

Under Obama government employees are down (not at the Federal level for the most part but still) by over half a million. Wanna take a stab at why this recession isn't quite as bouncy as the others? I suspect at least PART of that is that we have half a million people who were put out of work and since they aren't spending money they aren't creating demand. They cannot create demand without an income.

After a dozen years of failed economic policy, when most other nations had long since recovered, the option for war was one FDR needed badly, and set up the American people to participate in it, not so much because we were altruistic, as it was economic. FDR pushed Japan to attack, and withheld the known and decoded plan of attack from commanders at Pearl Harbor. He needed the trip wire to gain involvement.

Most other nations were involved in an ARMS RACE and later in an actual war. America, then, like now simply wasn't spending enough money. A point you solidly make because World War 2 is nothing but the government spending money like it's going out of style and worrying about how to pay for it later. That's ALL it is. Aside from the rich who'd have to pay for it (just like they did with WW2) are refusing to pay for it there is no reason that a hiring Americans to build a fleet of whatevers and then spend six months road tripping around Europe and Asia (as opposed to blowing it up) wouldn't work. Reagan didn't even have to do that.

It wasn't a decade of failed policies holding us back. It was a lack of a solid kick in the pants that simply wasn't accelerating us as quickly as we'd have liked.

 

[unregistered]

 

[mediocre]

I'm always seeing the RW tout out austerity as the answer to the US recession. However the daily headlines seems to suggest that it's an utter failure. Has it succeeded anywhere?

Throughout history austerity has always worked. It was always called by a different name though, living within your budget. Only in the last fifty years have we not lived within our means. It hasn't worked out so well.

 

[Sean Renaud]

I'm always seeing the RW tout out austerity as the answer to the US recession. However the daily headlines seems to suggest that it's an utter failure. Has it succeeded anywhere?

It's probably never worked anywhere at all because it's a stupid plan. It's right up there with using leeches to cure a disease. I'm sure if you look hard enough you can find a case where austerity didn't prevent a recovery just like there were cases of people getting better after being leeched. I very much doubt the leeches were helping in most cases though.