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.
I would also point to:
Felix Wittmer's The Yalta Betrayal from 1953, and
Mark Willey's Pearl Harbor - The Mother of all Conspiracies released in 1999. Willey's posited that the United States entry into WWII - by provoking Japanese - was really to save Stalin and the USSR.
Also, an interesting fact - the Wilson administation insisted - emphatically - that the SS LUSITAINIA was not carrying war materiel. It was not unitl the mid-1970's, when a British underseas film crew published photographs of her cargo (clearing showing munitions) that the US Archives "found" the original cargo manifest showing the "truth."
Note also that even today a myriad of Pearl Harbor documents - even some PURPLE messages - have never been released.
So, yes, the FDR history is very incomplete.
I would also point to:
Felix Wittmer's The Yalta Betrayal from 1953, andIn The New Dealer's War Flemming says that FDR was an anglophobe, and that FDR had the Navy harassing U-boats "throughout the summer of 1941." But he never gives the date of the German invasion of the USSR, so I had to look it up--June 22, 1941. IOW, the very first day of "the summer of 1941."Mark Willey's Pearl Harbor - The Mother of all Conspiracies released in 1999. Willey's posited that the United States entry into WWII - by provoking Japanese - was really to save Stalin and the USSR.
Actually that it said "Black Farmers" is even more telling. Many white sharecroppers were moved off land they did not own either.
Roosevelt was a fresh face.
Hitler was a fresh face.
Therefore Roosevelt was Hitler.
Elementary my dear Watson...
Like all things conservative, it's up to us to tip the youngsters off and let them see for themselves. If they find out that the establishment (teachers) have a skeleton hidden in the closet . . .In a similar vein, when will the Venona files and our knowledge that the Soviet spy network was even MORE extensive than even Joe McCarthy was saying, when will that lead to a revision in thinking about Cold War "hysteria" over spying?
Ann Coulter's statement in Slander to the effect that lots of intercepted Soviet cables were never decrypted interests me. Given that the computer power sitting on your desk is probably better than the entire NSA owned in 1960, it does seem that more of that stuff could be cracked now. Not that it wouldn't be better to just get the whole story straight from Moscow . . .
A. FDR meets Churchill in August 1941 (Placentia Bay) and they issue the Atlantic Charter. Note: (1) The United States is a neutral country at the time, (2) The US Navy convoying of British shipping is an act of war, (3) FDR commits the United States to armed support [the make war versus declare war comment] to the British and Dutch in the Far East IN EXCHANGE for their ceasing to ship oil to Japan. The deal - if the Japanes advance beyond the Isthmus of Kra, the US will fight. Note that NO US terrority is involved here.
B. Congress is not aware of (A) - and the details of this deal do come out until the Pearl Harbor investigations after WWII has ended.
C. The Japanese, now realizing that all oil has been cut-off, decides to fight recognizing full well that it is national suicide.
D. Finally, the Pearl Harbor attack was NOT a surprise attack - See Farago's The Broken Seal (paperback edition), viz., its Postscript section.
E. Congress before/after WWII was solidly in the hands of the Democratic Party - where FDR was/is their savior!
Enough said ... the truth about FDR remains to be told.
Nope.
There is a BIG difference between the personally-directed mandate of charity prescribed by Christ and some humungous Gummint program.
We happen to agree on almost all the practical matters at hand. I think Big Gummint is a failure in many (but not all) regards.
To a great extent, BTW, Big Gummint has damn near precluded individuals from exercising personal charity--the tax and regs burden has eaten most discretionary dollars.
Of course, one could live (and I include myself here) with less possessions. It's an option which I (and a lot of others) should consider.
I've always striven to be self employed and being single I never had to trade my dreams for security. I took risks and more than once I've suffered major loss. Once I lost everything I had and I mean everything except a beat up old car and a few clothes. Totally wiped out, furniture, everything. It is a difficult position to be in but it is very educational. I used to own a lot of very nice things - valuable antiques, historic artifacts and various cool treasures. Disposing of the stuff was like cutting off little bits of your fingers without anesthetic. Did it more than once. As much as it hurt they were good experiences. I'm not materialistic anymore. The grip has been broken. I don't knock consumer consumption though - I make money off of it but for myself owning lots of stuff has lost its meaning. I see more important needs which could be met with my money - and I don't need government to point them out either (and never did). I just see more now than I did before.
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