|
The attempt to rewrite history is so obvious... If one really feels that Obama is a major interventionist, and that the government is meddling "too much" in the economy, the obvious comparison would be FDR, not Hoover. But FDR is still a popular president, so that would be a bad political move for the republicans. So what do you do? Reinvent history in order to force a parallel with an unpopular president instead of a popular one.
There are certain things that there is near consensus about regarding the great depression: the failures of government include raising taxes, taking too long to come off the gold standard to avoid deflation, and too modest regulations regarding the banking industry. Obama, unlike Hoover, cannot be blamed for any of this. If you take the classic libertarian explanation for the great depression, it was caused by expansionist monetary policies earlier that decade. If that was the case, then the parallel in the current situation would be Bush and Greenspan's aggressive interest rate reduction early in the 2000s.
Oh, and Im still waiting to hear what, specifically, are Obama's far left policies.
|