The similarities between yesterday's Great Depression and the coming debt crunch are substantial: government will cause the crisis, and the results will likely be the same. As to Coolidge being the person who "failed," well, that's your personal opinion, as you state. But you trumpet the Roosevelt New-Dealer line when you claim the depression was caused by crappy lending. Probably less than one percent of the population engaged in any faulty borrowing of the sorts you claim. When the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 passed, because "government had to DO something!" and other countries retaliated and sealed the deal for any American industrial sales overseas and consumer spending in general. Then tax increases were passed in '32, and economic regulation and wage policies were promulgated under President Hoover, because "government had to DO something!" And government proceeded to run the country into a ditch. Roosevelt stealing all the gold in the country and then fixing gold prices at random actually jerked the market so out of whack that it reset itself somewhat, and by then the Nazis and the war they started were screwing up international capital markets anyway and nobody was worrying about what governments did.
Coolidge, on the other hand, did what Presidents are supposed to do. He produced balanced budgets, with billion-bucks-a-year reductions in the national debt. He cut taxes four times, had a budget surplus every year in office, and cut the national debt by a third during a period of unprecedented growth. Per capita income grew by nearly 50 percent. Automobile production grew nearly ten-fold. Technological innovation based upon electricity and the internal-combustion engine boomed. It took another 50 years to match the number of patents issued between 1918 and 1934. And he got government out of the business of 'doing something' every time something bad came along. He built the economy, and then Hoover got into it and wrecked it with quick-fix tinkering and GHWBush-style piddling. No, I don't believe Coolidge did fail. I think America has been fooled into thinking that FDR succeeded.
Will Rogers said of Coolidge:
"History generally records a place for a man who is ahead of his time. But we that lived with you remember you because you was WITH your times. By golly, you little red-headed New Englander, I liked you. You put horse sense into statesmanship."
Reagan thought Coolidge was an American hero. He hung Coolidge's portrait in the Cabinet room.
Coolidge said:
"There is a just government. There are righteous laws. We know the formula by which they are produced. The principle is best stated in the immortal Declaration of Independence to be 'the consent of the governed.'"
"The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. The wise and correct course to follow in taxation is not to destroy those who have already secured success, but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be successful."
"I want the people of America to be able to work less for the Government and more for their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom."
"O gold! I still prefer thee unto paper which makes bank credit like a bank of vapour."
"This country would not be a land of opportunity, America could not be America, if the people were shackled with government monopolies."
"Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing."
"Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty."
"Reagan thought Coolidge was an American hero. He hung Coolidge's portrait in the Cabinet room. "
He also admired F.D.R, in general, up until the 60s, Americans grew up in admiration of their Presidents.
And it's not crap to blame lending. Right now, the U.S Financial system is based on what's essentially a snake oil premise, namely, the "money" we have, we have it because the government has assigned a given value to a digit in a computer databank, a piece of paper, etc etc.
Prior to the F.D.R times, we backed our currency up with something tangible, something of value. People have blamed the depression on that, and it's true that deflation was caused by falling bullion prices, but, better deflation than stagflation. Without that backup in the 1970s, we underwent stagflation. Prior to the 30s, every few decades, you had a market correction, and one of the corrections would be a moderate degree of deflation. Roosevelt took that away from us, and thats one of the reasons we are heading for the crishendo I think we are approaching
The primary form of economic expansion in the 1920s was the stock market. There was a whole industry devoted to speculation, and in the Roarin' 20s, no one ever though shit could go sour. And while it's true only a small portion of the economy was on credit, it was the failure of credit that caused banks to fail, and thats what shutdown the economy for the better part of 10 years.
And finally, as for FDR, this country could have done much worse than FDR, the problem with the New Deal is that what were supposed to be emergency measures have in fact become quasi-permanent. The fact of the matter is, emergency measures were needed because to be honest, in 1933, talk of revolution was in the air. Communists were actually being taken seriously, and Huey Long (who came from an area of Louisana which had been home to a very activist socialist movement), was setting himself up as "hero of the people" in preperation for his 1936 presidential run.
F.D.R was bad, but he could have been a million times worse, and as for Coolidge, Coolidge could have used the power of the pulpit to try and dissaude the expansion of credit. Often times, you don't need to actually pass a law to get something done, you can just make a moving speech to people and that will inspire them to change.