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How Hitler and FDR actually ended the Great Depression
WaPo ^ | 08/18/2011 | Ezra Klein

Posted on 08/18/2011 11:51:30 AM PDT by markomalley

I’m a bit late to commenting on Christina Romer’s Sunday op-ed on monetary policy and the Great Depression, but it makes a point that bears repeating. The story most of us know about the Great Depression, the one in which Herbert Hoover screws up but then Franklin Delano Roosevelt comes in and hires people to paint murals and repair roads and defeat Hitler and that solves the problem, is wrong, or at least incomplete. Monetary policy — Boring, hard-to-understand, no-one-likes-to-talk-about-it, increases in the money base — was really the key to getting the economy back on track.

To get even more specific, the two policies Romer identifies as being key to the recovery were FDR’s decision to sign Executive Order 6102 and Hitler’s decision to overrun Europe.

Executive Order 6102 sounds pretty bizarre when you explain it. Remember that in the 1930s, dollars were backed by gold. Your dollar was worth what it was worth because the American government was committed to giving you a certain amount of gold in exchange for it. In Executive Order 6102, FDR forced every American to turn in almost all of their gold at a price of about $20 an ounce. Then he said that gold would stop being worth $20 per ounce and begin being worth $33 an ounce. This meant a massive devaluation in the dollar, which sounds bad, but actually meant a huge stimulus: our exports became cheaper and more popular, which in turn meant we created jobs because we needed more people to manufacture stuff that we could export.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: depression; greatdepression
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So now the WaPo is advocating a massive confiscation of wealth.

Traitorous bastards.

1 posted on 08/18/2011 11:51:35 AM PDT by markomalley
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To: markomalley

WaPo continues the lie that we can’t understand monetary policy because they don’t want us to see that the Federal Reserve is Smoke and Mirrors.

Realmoney would be backed by gold or solver or SOMETHING and not controlled by a few evil men.


2 posted on 08/18/2011 11:56:11 AM PDT by RoadTest (Organized religion is no substitute for the relationship the living God wants with you.)
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To: markomalley

FDR created the depression. He died before it was over. He had NOTHING to due with getting us out of the depression.

PERIOD!


3 posted on 08/18/2011 11:56:55 AM PDT by rightwingextremist1776
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To: RoadTest

Real money would be backed by gold or silver or SOMETHING and not controlled by a few evil men.


4 posted on 08/18/2011 11:57:07 AM PDT by RoadTest (Organized religion is no substitute for the relationship the living God wants with you.)
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To: markomalley

FDR created the depression. He died before it was over. He had NOTHING to due with getting us out of the depression.

PERIOD!


5 posted on 08/18/2011 11:57:09 AM PDT by rightwingextremist1776
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To: markomalley

The dasme Establishment that calls the shotsw today made nothing but money fro9m both sides of WWII. And they are said to have supported both sides. Remember how Eisenhower warned us of the Military Industrial Complex?


6 posted on 08/18/2011 12:00:43 PM PDT by Paperdoll (NO MORE BUSHS!)
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To: markomalley
Great. Christina Romer, architect of the Stimulus, and man-child yearbook editor Ezra Klein.

I suggest we listen to some new voices.

7 posted on 08/18/2011 12:00:48 PM PDT by magellan
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To: markomalley
Also look into the largest printing of the largest notes ever & 'ver 'de' 'vent to( 1928~1933 ).

And whose economy 'vent up 'ven ours 'vent down.

8 posted on 08/18/2011 12:01:29 PM PDT by de.rm ('Most people never believe anything you tell them unless it isn't true."-Groucho Marx)
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To: rightwingextremist1776
And if he had lived through the end of his term in 1949 he would have likely continued his disastrous economic policies after the war and slammed us right back into the Depression. Any bets on whether the wartime food and gasoline rationing would have been lifted if FDR was around in 1946?
9 posted on 08/18/2011 12:01:55 PM PDT by KarlInOhio (The Repubs and Dems are arguing whether to pour 9 or 10 buckets of gasoline on a burning house.)
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To: rightwingextremist1776
FDR created it? Huh?

It's another classic bubble by easy credit and money policies. Throw in terrible drought conditions, and other Gov't spending and you get a Depression.

FDR was not the cause.

10 posted on 08/18/2011 12:03:23 PM PDT by Palter (Celebrate diversity .22, .223, .25, 9mm, .32 .357, 10mm, .44, .45, .500)
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To: rightwingextremist1776

Wilson planted the seeds for the Great Depression. Hoover was straddled with it, and FDR put the cherry on the top!


11 posted on 08/18/2011 12:03:43 PM PDT by Paperdoll (NO MORE BUSHS!)
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To: markomalley
There appears to be an organized effort by the Keynesians to promote a doubling-down on Keynesian economics. It is coming from everywhere, and it is being cross posted by twerps like Klein.

I believe all of this is coming from the White House.

12 posted on 08/18/2011 12:04:41 PM PDT by magellan
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To: rightwingextremist1776

“FDR created the depression. He died before it was over. He had NOTHING to due with getting us out of the depression.”

The death of FDR is what ended the great depression. Can you imagine if he was healthy and lived into his seventies. We would be speaking Russian now.


13 posted on 08/18/2011 12:04:58 PM PDT by forgotten man (forgotten man)
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To: markomalley

Compared the the devastated nations in Europe, the US was indeed a very wealthy nation. But when one compares the standard of living in the late 40s to the 80s or today, the US in the 40s did not enjoy a high standard of living. Maybe we ought to put the effete Ezra Klein in a time machine back to post WW2 America. He would probably be wearing a green uniform and living in a barracks or a flop house with 20 other losers. The command economy may be necessary during a world war for survival but it certainly is not the way for a nation to increase wealth in other times.


14 posted on 08/18/2011 12:05:53 PM PDT by grumpygresh (Democrats delenda est)
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To: markomalley

Ezra Klein is a stupid little smart-ass leftie kid. He’s a regular on MSNBC, so you know he’s an ignorant commie.


15 posted on 08/18/2011 12:05:58 PM PDT by ozzymandus
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To: markomalley

FDR’s monetary policies prolonged the Depression, along with some rather short-sighted protectionist trade legislation. It was indeed the war that ended the Depression, and the fact that we were the only undamaged industrial power in the world when it ended kept it from returning.

You can’t compare the 1930’s to today, though. During the 1930’s, we didn’t have trillions of dollars of existing debt and unfunded future liabilities. We were able to finance the war by gigantic deficit spending and debt (anyone remember war bonds?), but we could afford the debt because it wasn’t piled on top of already incurred excessive debt. And we also had a manufacturing base that is gone today. And government regulation did not choke off development of new industry and economic expansion.

Keynesian monetary policy is still not valid, probably even more so today than in the 1930’s, but it’s still apples and oranges to try to make comparisons between the 1930’s and today.


16 posted on 08/18/2011 12:06:29 PM PDT by henkster (The Federal Reserve is the enabling housewife to an alcoholic husband.)
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To: markomalley

I want to yell wrong, but that word doesn’t seem to cover it. How about wrong, wrong, wrong? What kind of maniac thinks debasing currency is stimulative? And what kinda fool doesn’t know the depression dragged on for more than a decade after FDR stole our gold?


17 posted on 08/18/2011 12:09:32 PM PDT by Tublecane
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To: henkster

Exactly...these Kenyanesian clowns claim we must spend more to get out of an economic downturn but never mention that they have have been spending like drunks through good times and bad for decades.


18 posted on 08/18/2011 12:11:31 PM PDT by dogcaller
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To: markomalley

“Monetary policy — Boring, hard-to-understand, no-one-likes-to-talk-about-it”

Actually, in this case monetary policy is both simple and dramatic. Any rube can sit through a presidential gold heist story without nodding off. What’s hard to understand is how people miss the true significance of the move (i.e. nearly unlimited wealth available for government whims via inflation). It’s not that no one likes to talk about it, any less than people like to talk about history in general, beyond clichéd talking-points. No one talks about it because no one’s told them about it. It went down the old memory hole.


19 posted on 08/18/2011 12:17:10 PM PDT by Tublecane
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To: ozzymandus

Agree. Ezra Klein was also a founder of the Journolists.


20 posted on 08/18/2011 12:20:08 PM PDT by bronxville (Sarah will be the first American female president.)
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