It’s all about bigger is better.
Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
After scrutinizing Roosevelt’s record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years…
In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.
“President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible for the Depression…
The number of antitrust cases brought by the Department of Justice fell from an average of 12.5 cases per year during the 1920s to an average of 6.5 cases per year from 1935 to 1938, the scholars found. Collusion had become so widespread that one Department of Interior official complained of receiving identical bids from a protected industry (steel) on 257 different occasions…
Found by Guy Fawkes.
The link is dead.
I want to call bullshit but will hold until I can read the article.
[Fixed – ed.]
The link to the story is not valid. I’d also be skeptical of this research… Republicans have been very sore losers after this election. Are these guys serious researchers or just hacks saying what the Republicans want to hear? Have any independent researchers come up with the same results?
If you dig deep enough, you can find an internet article that supports basically any hairball opinion.
This one, printed sometime last summer is no exception.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx
“New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years…”
Took them long enough. FDRs Treas sec said as much. Keyes’ stupid econ philosophy isn’t used by anyone except idiots.
To the ramparts, all True Believers! They want to attack our sainted Great Father. We can never surrender! Never! Defend his hallowed name to your last breath.
The problem comes with COMPETITION..
and the gov backing and bailing out those companies that SHOULDNT NEED IT.
Keeping STUPID rich people RICH, is stupid.
Helping those SMART rich people, CAN help.
Throwing money at the problem like a 12 course meal, WONT feed the poor.
When the Quality goes to CRAP, and 90% of goods ARE CRAP, we eventually get upset, and STOP buying.
When we export 1/3 of our foods to other countries THEN BUY $3 bags of Poisoned lettuce, SOMETHING is wrong.
the OLD way, used to be that the profits were disbursed to the TOP of the corp ladder and stock holders..AFTER profits were figured at the end of year.
Why are the top 100 or so people at the top, WORTH 100 times more then those MAKING the products, in this country.
The gist of the article from <a href=UCLA Newsroom is that by Roosevelt encouraging labor to form unions that hurt the economy. The article does not tell us where demand would have come from although, as Roosevelt correctly believed, a financially healthy middle class with money to spend is important in any economy.
The best example of Keynesian economics working was Sweden. They were hurt and back on their feet within a couple of years. The complaint about Roosevelt was that he didn’t put enough money into the economy. The same complaint is now being voiced about Obama by Nobel Winner, Paul Krugman. Of course, the “thumb-up-their-butts” crowd that would rather have America fail don’t have any plan themselves except to criticize.
BTW, this was first published in August 2004. As I recall in an effort to bolster the Republican tax cuts as a way to stimulate the economy.
RE: 8
Eff word !!! I just hate it when I screw up a link. Oh well, I see the editor has fixed the link in the story above. Which went to the same location I tried to link to.
more likely, shouldn’t this mean we should be busting up all the monopolies and extremely large firms that are deemed too big to fail, like the regathering ma bell, the big banks, and the like?
I believe that the problems in the economy today are the result of deregulation.
It was Reagan who stopped enforcing anti-trust laws. The laws are on the books, just never enforced, and they should be. Then you have the banking deregulation that started under Clinton and really took off in the early Bush years.
There is no such thing as deregulation really, its all about changing rules. The deregulation movement at the turn of the century basically allowed increased short term profiteering, which often comes at the expense of long term stability.
Some would claim that the banks etc, made these crappy loans by choice. In fact it is not by choice. Public companies are legally obligated to make the biggest profits they can, or they can be sued by the stockholders. Bank regulation gives the banks cover from having to make the loans that caused the current mess. Hence deregulation is directly responsible for the current crisis, and the only fix is re-regulating.
I believe that we need to enforce the anti-trust laws again. Break up the megacorps again. Go back to state banking rather than national banking. Bring back import tariffs.
Complain about the solutions all you want, but continuing to do the things that got us into this mess in the first place is even more insane.
http://ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009020603/fdr-failed-myth
Important fact: Democrats made the most significant banking deregulation changes in 1994, the interstate banking bill.
Republicans who won the elections later that year followed later with more no doubt.
Well, lets see. Lets take a very complicated issue and boil it down to the simplest of ideas: X = Y.
Now I hate Repuglicans, so what do they like? Overpaid CEO’s.
OK, I have it now: Obama’s bailout plain will fail because the rapacious CEO’s are still overpaid.
There, just a little balance to the previous whackballs.
– – – or – – – just use the blind-folded dart thrown at a rotating dart board filled with random tangential issues like HMyers.
Roooosevelt talked a good game, but in the end was just another turd floating around the liberal toilet.
Every plan he enacted proved to be a total failure. If you want to credit someone’s “actions” with ending the Great Depression you can choose between Hitler or Tojo. Their reign of terror put people back to work thus ending the GD.
Proof again that government arrogance is usually the problem leaving the people to clean up their mess.
“W” used Keynesian economics (infrastructure spending, lower taxes, lower interest rates, during a supposed downturn) for almost a decade.
Never heard a Republican complain.
#17–contempt for brains not totally filled with shit==thats your analysis?
#19 Little Dog Bobbo
>>thats your analysis?
I would place it no higher than a rant.
#20–contempt for analysis==I must agree. But even as a rant, its pretty weak. You have to go for just a bit more subtlety don’t you think? Or is calling for thinking also too far your express purpose in posting?
Look how much more relevant your post would be with just saying WW2 was the operative reason we came out of the depression?
Food for thought, if you ever get hungry.
#21 Little Dog Bobbo
>>WW2 was the operative reason we came out of the depression.
I could have stated your way, but where’s the excitement… the intrigue… the shot at Roooosevelt that he so richly deserves.
#22–contempt for the dictionary==I think you are confusing excitement with excrement. You may not tell the difference in your world, but on Earth, we value the difference.
Why does this even come up? Bashing Roosevelt, I mean? Because on his watch came the great depression and it didn’t end until he was gone. Can’t we at least entertain the possibility that he extended it beyond where it would have gone. Although, I will say that I don’t like this article because it just a blame the symptoms rant. It’s like people blaming the economic crisis on greed; isn’t that a like blaming gravity for plane crashes? If we could just solve the gravity problem we wouldn’t have any more crashes.
If it’s true that he extended it then we have a problem because today’s economists are proposing very similar things. It’s an important question. Should we follow the advice of the guys who didn’t predict the current crisis (even told us everything was fine when it wasn’t), didn’t admit when it started to happen and think that following the example of a case where the crisis lasted over 10 years is a good idea? Or should we find some guys who did predict it and have some different things to do about it?
But I’m sure everyone would rather just keep blaming each other and trying the same old tired solutions that don’t work. Doesn’t everyone realize that democrats and republicans are getting paid by the same guys and not really interested in shaking anything up?
#23 Little Dog Bobbo
I think excrement was mentioned when I accused Roooosevelt of being just another turd floating around the liberal toilet.
#24–gooddebate==right you are. But even economists of good will with no contempt for reasoned analysis honestly disagree on “the best” course or even “a reasonble course” to take.
I think almost everyone agrees that re-regulation of the market is needed except for those Palin supporting types. Beyond that, no clear rules to follow.
I think Obama is wrong to think that any dollar spent is sufficient stimulus. I think it is misguided to think giving money to the same folks who caused the problem is any solution. Certainly, dollars spent to create “real” jobs and/or infrastructure, green energy, etc should have fewer detractors than the mish-mash of tax reductions and pork currently on offer?
Course then, I can never balance my checkbook without 2-3 goes.
Complete rubbish. Roosevelt’s Keynesian economics rebuilt America, Germany, Japan and most of western Europe after the depression and two world wars and set the stage for the 50’s, a period of unrivaled general economic prosperity.
#25–contempt for the smallest insight==yes, I agree you think making a reference to a “turd” is the height of “excitement” but it is really just a reference to excrement. ((ie–no excitement, no intrigue.))
What is it about a straight forward exposition that escapes you?
Roosevelt was like a god to the people of the USA back then. He was elected four times and had he lived he probably would have been elected again. Roosevelt got us out of the depression that the republicans of the 1920’s got us into. I grew up in the northeast and when I was a child you would often see two non-family pictures hanging on peoples walls. One was Jesus and the other Franklin Roosevelt. There is a reason that for the most part the republican party was in the minority for most of half century after Roosevelt was elected. The people who lived through the depression knew who caused it and who got us out of it. It is a shame that this country had to go through 8 years of George Bush to relearn the lesson that republican policies lead to economic disasters.
A lot of number crunchers think that his policies kept people from moving on when the situation indicated they should move on.
What is known is that the US was slow to recover when some other countries came back much faster.
#24 asked: Why does this even come up? Bashing Roosevelt, I mean?
Because if the right-wing can discredit Rosie then they can ‘legitimately’ discredit Obama’s policies. It’s a weak strategy, but it’s all they have.
Rush will keep repeating it, the ditto-sphincters keep repeating it, and before you know it….it will become truth within the right wing…and of course this “truth” will not be reported by the librul media because they’re in the tank for Obama. But it’s not truth at all.
See how this works?