Re: Doonesbury Feb 2008 - last week

On Mar 2, 10:57 pm, "sanford sklansky" <sanfordsklan...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
"Dann" <detox...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:Xns9A55DE1F1165Fdetox665hotmailcom@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx



On 01 Mar 2008, sanford sklansky said the following in
news:XRmyj.11319$Ru4.7346@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Dann" <detox...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Xns9A54B4B8C8BB1detox665hotmailcom@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 01 Mar 2008, Carl Fink said the following in
news:slrnfsjdb0.pdq.carlf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On 2008-03-01, Antonio E Gonzalez <AntEGM...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Yeah, look at the way the New Deal undermined th- . . . oh
right,
it actually ended the Great Depression . . .

In the sense of not actually ending the Depression. It surely made
it less horrible for the people at the very bottom, but World War
Two and the natural economic cycle ended it.

Much like as the current proposed economic policies [tax rebate
stimulus, lower interest rates, deficit spending] are ill-informed
economic interventions, the New Deal actually made matters worse by
forcing the Depression to last many years more than would have
otherwise been the case. I would also argue that the world war that
brought the world out of that economic depression more than natural
economic cycles.

Sure, the handouts helped people survive a 10 year depression, but
they might have found survival easier if it had only lasted the 1 to
3 years that was typical up until that point.

If you want to pinpoint the start of the depression from the day the
stock market crashed until Rooesevelt was inaugerated it was over 3
years already, so that puts it in to the 1 to 3 years you quote. By
the time Roosevelt took over the country was in pretty poor shape.

Absolutely correct. An accurate reading of history indicates that FDR
did nothing more than take the Hoover administration's harmful
initiatives and put them on steroids. It was the continuation of the
Hoover administation's bad ideas, coupled with FDR's substantially flawed
ideas about initiating a command ideas that caused the damage.

People where already out of work, there were lines for soup kitchens,
people had lost their homes and there were plenty of bank runs. That
is why after Roosevelt was inaugerated the banks were closed for a
short time. I think Roosevelt was just trying to do what ever he
could to get the economy going again.

That's a different critter. The banking and investment system needed
considerable overhaul/regulation/reform. FDR's administration
established an impressive framework for reform that has created ever
growing transparency in investments and banking.

Had FDR limited his administration's corrective actions to those reforms,
the depression would have ended years earlier.

First of all you said depressions only last 1 to 3 years. The country was
well into the depression by the time Roosevelt was inaugerated. And as I
just read somewhere else tonight.

That legislation - some of it conservative, most of it moderate, none of it
radical, all of it experimental - derived from no over-arching plan, and
certainly not from any liberal ideology that Roosevelt presented during the
campaign and brought with him into the White House. Rather than a package of
legislation, as implied by the Hundred Days label, what Roosevelt and his
"Brain Trust" of academics and economic theorists produced was a mish-mash,
exactly what would be expected of experimentation in the face of a daunting
crisis. "The notion that the New Deal had a preconceived theoretical
position is ridiculous," said Frances Perkins, who would become FDR's,
Secretary of Labor from 1933-45, the first woman ever to serve in the
Cabinet.

The experiments worked not just for what they actually achieved - which was
a mixed bag - but also for how their very coming into being changed the
nation's somber mood.


I note that Dann has not responded to my observation that comparing
the 1929-42 Depression to any previous ones is nigh on impossible,
because of the change to a globally connected economy in the first
third of the 20th Century.

I'd also ask him this--if it was only the actions of the FDR
administration that prolonged the Depression in this country, why did
it last equally long in Britain and other industrialized nations,
where no such moves were made?



.

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