Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy
if you want to have a discussion based on a historical parallel things are typically helped along by having at least some idea of the historical material that's being played with---because in this case that's all we're seeing here---a rhetorical trial balloon coming from the fetid intellectual swamp of the right to see if against all reason and historical information obama can be superimposed on herbert hoover, who was a freemarketeer for the most part, presumably so that the republicans can then sweep in on some imaginary plane and frame exactly the same capitalist metaphysics that's work out o so fucking well over the past 30 years as if it is some kind of new deal. i dont know who they imagine they're talking to...maybe the same imaginary constituency they think voted for scott brown. the republicans now seem to think they're independent of their own record of being in power, independent of the bush period, independent of history, independent of reality so they can draw all other idenpendents their way.
so in that independent of interest kinda way we're being asked to consider in an independent of historical information so independent of logic scenario whether obama might be equated with herbert hoover.
i mean seriously ace. this isn't even your fault. you just gave it a try.
it's perfectly reasonable to see this move for what it is and not talk about the questions you pose. to do that would accept the frame you trot out. i think the frame is absurd.
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I was gonna say......
When this current recession landed in Obama's lap (a gift from George W Bush and Bill Clinton to a lesser degree) Obama looked to Hoover to see what NOT to do.
Hoover believed in the free market sorting itself out, so he did nothing, or very little. The result was 10 years of economic turmoil.
The arguement has always been that if Hoover had acted swiftly and decisively that the Great Depression (a term somewhat coined by Hoover who didn't want to use the term "panic" which had been used in the past to label recessions and instead called it "a slight depression in the economic growth curve") could have been at least tempered.
What Hoover did:
Higher taxes and tariffs
Shrunken money supply.
There was no direct relief for the unemployed. They could beg, steal, or starve, though Hoover claimed that they prospered selling apples.
The unemployment rate was approximately 33 percent, (not the 25 percent the revisionist Right now claims),
Almost all banks in 38 states had been closed.
In most of the other states and Washington, D.C., withdrawals were limited to 5 percent of deposits, and in Texas to $10 per day.
The New York Stock Exchange and the Chicago commodity exchange had been closed, indefinitely. The financial system had effectively collapsed.
What Roosevelt did:
Guaranteed bank deposits
Made the federal government a temporary non-voting preferred shareholder in thousands of suddenly undercapitalized banks (more than half the banks in the country),
Refinanced millions of residential and farm mortgages,
Put millions of people to work in relief programs,
Increased the money supply,
Repealed Prohibition of alcoholic beverages
Legislated reduced working hours and improved working conditions for the whole work force.
In the next two years, he set up the Securities and Exchange Commission, created the Social Security system, broadened the powers of the Federal Reserve to equal those of other nations’ central banks,
The key to evaluating Roosevelt’s performance at combating the Depression is the statistical treatment of many millions of unemployed engaged in his massive workfare programs, which were called “internal improvements” in Jackson's time, and are called “infrastructure” now. The government hired about 60 percent of the unemployed in public-works and conservation projects that planted a billion trees, saved the whooping crane, modernized rural America, and built such diverse projects as the Cathedral of Learning in Pittsburgh, the Montana state capitol, much of the Chicago lakefront, New York City’s Lincoln Tunnel and Triborough Bridge, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the heroic aircraft carriers Enterprise and Yorktown. They also built or renovated 2,500 hospitals, 45,000 schools, 13,000 parks and playgrounds, 7,800 bridges, 700,000 miles of roads, and a thousand airfields. They employed 50,000 schoolteachers, rebuilt the entire rural school system of the country, and employed 3,000 writers, musicians, sculptors, and painters, including the young Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock.
Source:
Roosevelt & the Revisionists - Conrad Black - National Review Online
Now I'm not saying that Obama is FDR, not even close. If anything, I am disappointed in him so fare, however, he certainly is not mirroring anything that was done by Herbert Hoover.
Like the Depression of the 30's which was caused by the unregulated buying and selling of stock without the necessary capital to back it up this recession was caused by the unregulated buying and selling of real estate without the necessary capital to back it up.
Until such time as the government enacts legislation to change the banking rules, this can and will happen again. (I would say that perspective home owners should need to have at least 10% down on any real estate purchase.)