Posted on 08/30/2003 11:59:46 AM PDT by Cathryn Crawford
FDR's Raw Deal Exposed
August 30, 2003
BY THOMAS ROESER
For 70 years there has been a holy creed--spread by academia until accepted by media and most Americans--that Franklin D. Roosevelt cured the Great Depression. That belief spurred the growth of modern liberalism; conservatives are still on the defensive where modern historians are concerned.
Not so anymore when the facts are considered. Now a scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute has demonstrated that (a) not only did Roosevelt not end the Depression, but (b) by incompetent measures, he prolonged it. But FDR's myth has sold. Roosevelt, the master of the fireside chat, was powerful. His style has been equaled but not excelled.
Throughout the New Deal period, median unemployment was 17.2 percent. Joblessness never dipped below 14 percent, writes Jim Powell in a preview of his soon-to-be-published (by Crown Forum) FDR's Folly: How Franklin Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression. Powell argues that the major cause of the Depression was not stock market abuses but the Federal Reserve, which contracted the money supply by a third between 1929 and 1933. Then, the New Deal made it more expensive to hire people, adding to unemployment by concocting the National Industrial Recovery Act, which created some 700 cartels with codes mandating above-market wages. It made things worse, ''by doubling taxes, making it more expensive for employers to hire people, making it harder for entrepreneurs to raise capital, demonizing employers, destroying food . . . breaking up the strongest banks, forcing up the cost of living, channeling welfare away from the poorest people and enacting labor laws that hit poor African Americans especially hard,'' Powell writes.
Taxes spiraled (as a percentage of gross national product), jumping from 3.5 percent in 1933 to 6.9 percent in 1940. An undistributed profits tax was introduced. Securities laws made it harder for employers to raise capital. In ''an unprecedented crusade against big employers,'' the Justice Department hired 300 lawyers, who filed 150 antitrust lawsuits. Winning few prosecutions, the antitrust crusade not only flopped, but wracked an already reeling economy. At the same time, a retail price maintenance act allowed manufacturers to jack up retail prices of branded merchandise, which blocked chain stores from discounting prices, hitting consumers.
Roosevelt's central banking ''reform'' broke up the strongest banks, those engaged in commercial investment banking, ''because New Dealers imagined that securities underwriting was a factor in all bank failures,'' but didn't touch the cause of 90 percent of the bank failures: state and federal unit banking laws. Canada, which allowed nationwide branch banking, had not a single bank failure during the Depression. The New Deal Fed hiked banks' reserve requirement by 50 percent in July 1936, then increased it another 33.3 percent. This ''triggered a contraction of the money supply, which was one of the most important factors bringing on the Depression of 1938--the third most severe since World War I. Real GNP declined 18 percent and industrial production was down 32 percent.''
Roosevelt's National Recovery Administration hit the little guy worst of all, Powell writes. In 1934, Jacob Maged, a 49-year-old immigrant, was fined and jailed three months for charging 35 cents to press a suit rather rather than 40 cents mandated by the Fed's dry cleaning code. The NRA was later ruled unconstitutional. To raise farm prices, Roosevelt's farm policy plowed under 10 million acres of cultivated land, preventing wheat, corn and other crops from reaching the hungry. Hog farmers were paid to slaughter about 6 million young hogs, protested by John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. New Deal relief programs were steered away from the South, the nation's poorest region. ''A reported 15,654 people were forced from their homes to make way for dams,'' Powell writes. ''Farm owners received cash settlements for their condemned property, but the thousands of black tenant farmers got nothing.''
In contrast, the first Depression of the 20th century, in 1920, lasted only a year after Warren Harding cut taxes, slashed spending and returned to the poker table. But with the Great Depression, the myth has grown that unemployment and economic hardship were ended by magical New Deal fiat. The truth: The Depression ended with the buildup to World War II.
Name me three (just three) truly great libertarian Presidents of the United States!!!
It's my belief that anti-semitism was a pretty stong current in both Catholic and Orthodox Church teachings during the Middle Ages. Is that wrong?
Recent articles in the Atlantic Monthly re-examined Church policy toward Germany during WWII and Hitler's relationship to the Church. I would prefer to have you read and comment on them rather than (possibly) screwing up things any further than I (might) have.
Personally, I have problems with all three monotheistic faiths. I believe intolerance is built into them. I could be wrong, though. Perhaps intolerance is a human characteristic which monotheism has not very successfully addressed.
It's possible you're right about FDR's policies. We won't know that until we have a chance to test the new ideas. And even then there's the question of hindsight if you start assessing blame.
Roosevelt certainly might have done better with refugees. But some refugees blamed him and others didn't. A leader can only do so much. No leader is perfect.
We've kept most of their best ideas.
Okay, okay, I'll let you off the hook. Just name two (only two) truly great Libertarian Presidents of the United States.
I'm arguing with Republicans who want to blame all the ills of the '30s and '40s on FDR. Some of my arguments may have gone to far in the other direction.
I believe that party politics more often than not cloud rather than clarify reality. The reality is that humanity is often faced with problems it doesn't understand and can't solve. People are forced to improvise and take the blame if they're wrong. Lawyers heaven.
Yes.
Briefly (and at the expense of fine-tooth detailing) this 'urban legend' has been around for a long time and is taking new life with the upcoming release of Gibson's "Passion" movie.
Most of the foofoodust can be dispelled by understanding that individuals are NOT 'the Church' and that while there may have been numerous individuals who are/were anti-Semitic, their blatherings are to one extent or the other, wrong and (most likely) sinful.
The more generalized 'urban legend' about anti-Semitism comes from a deformed understanding about the Church's teaching on the Crucifixion of Christ, and the Gibson threads have plenty of commentary.
Again, briefly, the Gospels record the fact that certain Jewish leaders agitated for the death of Christ. This has been transmogrified to mean that "The Church teaches" that "the Jews" are "Christkillers."
I suspect that you see, immediately, the difference between the reality and the legend.
I cannot speak for/to the Orthodox' comments but I suspect that it's about the same.
Christ came into the world to die for the sins of mankind and open the Gates of Heaven to them, taking first: Moses, Aaron, and Isaiah. For crying out loud, if that's what the Church teaches (and it does) how the blazes can we also teach that the "jews" are bad guys?
I don't know any sinless people in the Church, and I don't know any sinless Jews. Most times I try (sometimes successfully) to forgive and forget.
Weisenthal Center, on the other hand, will NEVER forgive and NEVER forget--and they are not to careful about what they insinuate into 'public knowledge,' fact-wise.
As to monotheism: Christ taught us that there are two Commandments 'on which all other Law (including the Big 10) depend': Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. You can determine for yourself if the message is being conveyed correctly--but the message certainly doesn't seem 'intolerant' to me...
T. Jefferson
Maybe you heard of them?
"No man is safe in his life, his liberty, or his property, while the legislature is in session." - TJ
I'm involved in a personal way in hospital and health care problems. I'm not doing much better in that field.
P.S. Cleveland - one of the very best presidents we ever had.
No. Actually, I've changed my mind about that. It was just a crazy idea I got from u-89's post 152. Feel free to offer an honest opinion.
A true-er fact was never spoken. Follow the money, not the national interest.
So, which of us is critical of our nation's history?
How can we return to the constitutional republic if we do not know that we ever left it? Dispelling the propaganda of liberalism masquarading as history is the essential first step towards libertarian victory, as you put it.
We NON-democRATs have known this for the last 60 years.
Well, as for our libertarian beginning, I urge you to read the Sedition Act passed by Congress less than 10 years after the Constitution was ratified. Believe it or not, this country was not exactly a Libertarian Garden of Eden at its founding.
Glad you asked. Throwing money away at poverty is one of my pet peeves. IMHO, the cause of poverty is crime. Those who can escape it, do. Those left behind, perpetuate it. The thugs that thrive, for a while, on the income from vice that is present with poverty and the timid that are afraid to protect themselves and seek sustenance from crooked local politicians.
To the Left, the easy answer to poverty is give the poor money. The real answer is give the poor justice. Arrest the pimps, dealers and cheats. Teach the timid to defend themselves. (off soapbox)
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