Posted on 07/22/2002 3:11:50 PM PDT by AdamSelene235
There are those who would say that this period was simply a Cycle Degree correction and what we are currently facing is a Super Cycle Degree correction. Hope not!
Bush's policies much like Hoovers implicitly endorse Socialism while wearing the cloak of free market capitalism.
This sets us up for an explicitly Socialist president who will claim that Bush's reliance on "free markets" has failed.
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Neither. He's Howdy Doody.
"Why, if we don't impose any tarriffs, nobody else will!" Yeah, in your dreams, Reed.
America is the market everybody else wants into and they should pay for the privilege. America was most prosperous and funded government Constitutionally with tarriffs and excises for 100+ years and dreamers like this guy dredge up their boogeyman of Smoot-Hawley every time they want to con people into their utopian view of things. Libertarian style "free-trade" (particularly among nations) is contrary to human nature and I wish they'd just grow up and put a lid on it.
Other than that, his criticisms of the Fed & Roosevelt aren't stong enough.
Also known as "debasing the coinage", a crime that used to be punishable by death in past years in other lands. Of course, kings and queens used to do it all the time, and it's still being done wantonly by government, in which case it's called "fiscal policy".
Bingo! That game has already started, of course. That's the hidden point behind the Dumbs' attempt to blame Bush for the Business Integrity Scandals.
The lead article is a quite factual rescitation of events. As a student of the political history of the 1920s, I can assure you that Hoover was indeed to the Left of the Democrats in 1928 and 1932. What happened after Roosevelt took office, is also no secret. Nor is there any question but that FDR gave us by far our longest Depression.
There is, of course, a 36 year cycle, which the author largely ignores in setting forth the purely economic and political aspects. Cycles like that involve psychology rather than economics; and are thus less easy to explain. We are now in the same cycle (72 years ago was 1930), but whether the market continues to dive, triggering a contraction in the economy, may depend on how well we are able to allow a rapid adjustment of private economic activity to meet the challenge. All of the motivations, which make free enterprise work are still in place. The danger is when the politicians try to macro-manage the people's business.
That was the problem in 1929 to 1941, and we must not let it cause a similar result now.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Ack! [Choking sound] What is the point of even working?
Not really even then. Employment went up as the market for soldiers really took off and also the market for weapons, so employment was full but there was no money. All our production was being blown up in a war. It took the easing of controls after the war to bring to end thee depression. War production adds nothing to an economy unless it is production for someone else's war.
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