The Big Lie About The Great Depression

Townhall.com ^ | June 27, 2007 | Ben Shapiro

[Jaysun]

My favorite part is when they mention the unprecedented growth after the war. It’s worth mentioning that the end of the war (and the start of the unprecedented growth) came just after the death of FDR.

[tacticalogic]

Dredging up mistakes from 75 years ago that I can do nothing about is pointless IMO.

The point is to educate people who don't know about those mistakes and their consequences, and are trying to make them all over again. IMO.

[darth]

Got my masters degree in The Dismal Science. The Great Depression had its roots in the trade war that began in Europe in the late 1920s. Our very own Congress got into the trade war with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. World trade fell by 90%!!! Would Texas become poorer if we tried to produce everything within our own borders? Prices would rise, quality would drop, and everyone’s standard of living would suck. The Crash of ‘29 was followed by the idiotic policy of cutting the money supply. This, coupled with the drastic decrease in the velocity of money, was a disaster. Raising taxes on productive people, misallocating resources through government programs, new regulations....Its just too bad that Milton Friedman was not there to tell them how to fix it. BTW, I recently read the biography of Bernard Baruch. He was a financial genius when it came to making his own fortune and a complete moron when prescribing national policies.

[MosesKnows]

What produced the Great Depression was unrestricted buying on “margin”.

I disagree. That led to the stock market crash of 1929 but not the Great Depression.

What caused the Great Depression was the passage of the Smoot-Hartley Tariff Act of 1930, which arguably encouraged other countries to retaliate with tariffs of their own. At virtually the same time, Congress unwittingly passed the largest peacetime tax increase in the history of the United States. The combination of these two events caused, not just the United States, but also the entire world to sink into a deep depression.

[OriginalIntent]

That's up to whoever gets elected in '08. Be afraid, very afraid of a democratic government during a downturn.

When a downturn has happened in the past, the liberals have broken every rule and told any lie to try to use the downturn to convince the populace to lean toward a further expansion of the federal bureaucracy. When I say liberal, I point toward those in both parties.

[HEY4QDEMS]

The point is to educate people who don't know about those mistakes and their consequences, and are trying to make them all over again. IMO

That's all well and good but more often than not, it is advanced as a reason to bitch and provides very little constructive substance.

[Nextrush]

Ironically, it was World War II as started by Adolf Hitler that brought America back from the Depression.

In September 1939, right after the war began, Roosevelt went to Congress to modify the Neutrality Act to allow Britain and France to buy weapons on a “cash and carry” basis.

British and French money poured into our country and factories geared up to build weapons for them.

In 1940, the U.S. defense buildup began and the unemployment rates tumbled even further.

[tacticalogic]

That's all well and good but more often than not, it is advanced as a reason to bitch and provides very little constructive substance.

Then let's try to put it into some kind of constructive context, like the coming debate on socializing health care, rather than engage in speculative bitching about the reason it was brought up.

[HEY4QDEMS]

rather than engage in speculative bitching about the reason it was brought up.

Who's bitching about it being brought up? Certainly not I, I was answering the question as to what the Libs will do when they find out about this.

Anyone who thinks I am bitching is being way over sensitive.

[tacticalogic]

Dredging up mistakes from 75 years ago that I can do nothing about is pointless IMO.

That looked critical of even bringing it up, as being a waste of time. Apologies if I misunderstood.

[kitkat]

***It is a very good thing that FDR is fading into history.***

Ah, but my dear sir, it isn’t. It’s still kept alive by the communist professors who teach people like my neighbor who points to FDR as the greatest president this country has ever known.

[HEY4QDEMS]

That’s understandable. I don’t always translate my thoughts to the keyboard as I well as I would like.

[kitkat]

***Do you REALLY think that over 10 years of the “Great Depression” was an accident?***

I agree with every word you said.

The Democrats are famous for keeping people down and in need of government help. That’s how they get votes.

[ALPAPilot]

Milton Friedman has an analysis of the causes in his book “Free to Choose” far be it from me to gainsay him. It was bad monetary policy by the Fed.

[Moonman62]

What produced the Great Depression was unrestricted buying on “margin”.

What percentage of market capital was a margin loan?

[ModelBreaker]

Wait til his great Ponzi scheme (aka Social Security) collapses. He’ll go from revered to reviled in less than a generation.

Nope. Conservatives will get the blame.

[TChris]

What produced the Great Depression was unrestricted buying on “margin”. Everybody, EVERYBODY, got into the Market not as a long term investment, but on a “flipping” basis, where the last person in line gets stuck with the check. Too many people were buying with a lack of hard money to back up their purchases, so when the market naturally corrected itself, it fell apart.

I don't think the author is denying the cause of the Depression, but pointing out that FDR's leftist policies made it worse and made it last much longer.

If he had kept the government's meddling fingers out of it, the market would have smacked down the margin-buying Ponzi scheme and then recovered, much as the Dot Com bubble smacked a few people really hard, but didn't tank the whole market for a decade.

[mywholebodyisaweapon]

Thank you, NavyCanDo, for an excellent post!

[newguy357]

FDR did more to permanently damage the republic than any other single person in this nation’s history.

[SMARTY]

Churchill did not have a lot of confidence in FDR’s intellectual abilities. And, in reading about Stillwell and our experience in China, it seems that FDR’s war planning for the CBI theater was not what it could have been.