Monday, July 19, 2010

The mystery of the missing jobs - Opinion Journal "Stimulating unemployment": "The one possibility the President and Congressional Democrats won't entertain is that their own spending and taxing and regulating and labor union favoritism have become the main hindrance to job creation." Jennifer Rubin expands on that strange notion here.

4 comments:

Bram said...

The problem with Democrats is that they believed the FDR party line. That he saved them from the Depression.

The fact is that Hoover's, then FDR's taxes, spending, borrowing, and economic meddling CAUSED the Depression. Now they are determined to repeat FDR's economic "successes."

FDR's Timeline of Failure said...

1928: Industrial productivity declines worldwide. Real estate values drop in the U.S. A massive credit-driven investment boom continues.

1929: Industrial productivity declines in the U.S. The Federal Reserve reaches its then-legal limit of allowable credit, and begins contracting the money supply. In August, recession hits. In October, the U.S. stock market crashes.

1930: The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act is passed, reducing trade and provoking similarly protectionist tariffs overseas. Over 700 U.S. banks fail.

1931: Production declines further. A second wave of U.S. bank failures hit. Austria's main bank also collapses. German banks also fail. U.S. capital investment drops. Britain leaves the gold standard, and its economy recovers more quickly than other nations do.

1932: American exports drop by half in volume, and by two-thirds in price. Drought hits the midwest. U.S. farmers default on their loans in record numbers. More than 5,000 U.S. banks have failed. Surviving banks build their reserves and make fewer loans. The unemployment rate reaches 24%.

March 4, 1933: Franklin Roosevelt is inaugurated as President. Shortly afterward, he CAUSES the Depression.

Hell, Bram, you may as well go all the way and say it was Bill Clinton's fault.

Bram said...

I believe I mentioned Herbert Hoover, that original Progressive RINO, by name in my comment. He screwed up a Recession by the numbers and proved himself the fool Coolidge said he was.

You left out this tidbit that I will quote from Wikipedia:
“Various countries around the world started to recover from the Great Depression at different times. In most countries of the world, recovery from the Great Depression began in 1933. In the U.S., recovery began in the spring of 1933. However, the U.S. did not return to 1929 GNP for over a decade and still had an unemployment rate of about 15% in 1940, albeit down from the high of 25% in 1933.”

In 1932, FDR ran to the right of Hoover and was elected in a landslide. Unfortunately, he governed far to the left - and managed to keep Hoover's endless recession going until WWII allowed him to send the unemployed offshore. Once FDR died (in true Democrat fashion – on vacation with his mistress) the planned post WWII 2nd New Deal was canceled and the Depression finally ended.

FDR reign was so disastrous, his own party passed the 22nd Amendment - term-limiting Presidents less than 2 years after his death.

FDR, Undercover RINO said...

Most countries began to recover in 1933... but Roosevelt's economic policies sucked because the U.S. didn't begin to recover until early 1933. Got it.

Which reminds me: why hasn't Barack Obama fixed everything already? He's had ages and ages. His reign is disastrous! His own party may need to pass a new amendment, limiting Presidents to 18 months.

Okay, back on Planet Earth, Bram says Roosevelt's landslide election was built on conservative rhetoric. Let's see. The 1932 Democratic platform blasted "economic isolation, fostering the merger of competitive businesses into monopolies and encouraging the indefensible expansion and contraction of credit for private profit at the expense of the public." The platform called for a tax system "levied on the principle of ability to pay." It advocated a switch from the gold standard to the silver. It argued for an "international economic conference" to undo tariffs, and arbitrated settlement of international disputes (were black helicopters invented yet?). The platform featured proposals for the extension of credit to fund federal unemployment benefits and the institution of Social Security, expansion of federally-funded construction projects, a reduction in the days and hours of the work week, support for farm co-operatives, cutbacks in the military budget, heftier anti-trust laws, government control over water power, regulated Wall Street transparency, the repeal of Prohibition, and more. In his most famous campaign speech, FDR said that the federal government should provide no less than 2 billion dollars to assist "the little fellow," specifically contrasting it with the money being given to corporations. In his convention speech, FDR talked openly about changing "the distribution of national wealth." If that's "running to the right of Hoover," Hoover must have been out on the campaign trail stumping for Hitler Youth and Soylent Green.

You're out of your head, Bram.