Posted on 03/17/2005 8:05:25 AM PST by ken21
Good post/thread bump
Only by left-wing socialist nutcakes. What finally ended the Great Depression was World War II and its attendant production boom, in spite of rather than in concert with FDR's idiotic New Deal programs.
Socialists are so stupid.
Look, they're talking about your favorite president (not).
bookmark
We've got a supposedly conservative Republican administration, and they've got their lawyers in front of the USSC defending Wickard v Filburn now.
Indeed, he completely blasted the Keynesian tactics used (badly) in that book.
John Flynn spelled this out in detail in 1948, so it isn't revisionist history, and you can read his book for free:
The Roosevelt Myth
http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/book/hbzfrm.htm
Right. World War II was optional, the US could have sat it out. I bet you believe in the Easter Bunny too.
Worst president ever.
He only seems to have started to really care about what was going on when his precious Soviet Union was threatened.
While I fully support the President on his foreign policy, especially in regards to Iraq and the WoT, he is making every one of my worst fears come true on a domestic level. From border control, entitlement programs, and on to his "managed economy" policies that have only managed to not be a dissaster through sheer luck.
Glad to see the "professionals" finally getting into the act. Friedman won a Nobel prize in 1976 in part for his work on the Depression and how the Fed screwed up the money supply, helping to prevent recovery. The regulatory effects of the NRA and other (unconstitutional) legislation pushed by FDR clearly had an effect as well. Raising the price of labor through minimum wage laws in the face of oversupply of labor sure didn't move things in the right direction. When I was in college in the 70's I studied History and Economics. The historians gave the Keynesian gobeldygook answer about the Depression. The economists at least had some tantalizing speculations about how the regulatory effect of the New Deal was harmful to recovery. Now, after the fact, I know they must have been reading Friedman.
I used to think doing something was better than doing nothing (which Hoover was accused of doing) during the Depression but now I see it would have been much better if Roosevelt had done nothing.
This has been a bad year for Roosevelt's legacy proving again that it sucks to be a Democrat.
"He only seems to have started to really care about what was going on when his precious Soviet Union was threatened." BINGO!
His point wasn't that WWII was optional - that's another debate, the issue is that Roosevelt campaigned for a third term, breaking precedent, on the premise of being the only one able to keep us out of the war.
Thomas Woods, in his recent book "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History" makes the same claim.
Ridiculous. He was doing a heck of a lot to support Britain when the Soviet Union was still part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The Lend-Lease Act, beginning of the draft in the US, the US escorting convoys in the Atlantic and attacking U-Boats, were all BEFORE Germany invaded Russia.
Unfortunately that claim is nonsense.
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