Long Depression was FDR’s Fault
-By Warner Todd Huston
I have for years been saying that Franklin D. Roosevelt prolonged the Great Depression with his anti-capitalist, anti-American New Deal policies. Looks like some professors at UCLA agree with me.
“President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible for the Depression by reducing prices and wages, and by extension reducing employment and demand for goods and services,” said Cole, also a UCLA professor of economics. “So he came up with a recovery package that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies.”
Many people have been fooled by left-wing hortatory (or maybe whore-atory is closer) biographies for years. FDR was our savior, they claim. In truth, FDR was a failure in everything but the prosecution of the war. If there was no WWII FDR would have gone down in history as an utter failure.
FDR was the closest thing we’ve ever had to a socialist in the White House and has an utterly undeserved reputation. In any case his reputation for saving the economy is pure bunk.
“The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes,” Cole said. “Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened.”
I’m glad the university set are finally coming to the side of reality and truth on this at long last.
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Posted by Warner Todd Huston on October 7, 2008 11:14 pm
» Filed Under Communism, Democrats, Economy, Education, Fiscal Responsibility, History, Liberal Media/Bias, News, Socialism
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4 Responses to “Long Depression was FDR’s Fault”
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FDR was the single greatest elected politician in modern history and was able to overcome the devastating physical challenge of Polio. He was a vigorous man who overcame a lifetime of sickness. He had wonderful mentors, Theodore Roosevelt, Al Smith, and Woodrow Wilson. He took something from all of them, and was smart enough to avoid the problems they all experienced. He shaped his own destiny, built the new Democratic Party, halted the panic that paralyzed America after four years of Depression, created the New Deal, and led America towards recovery. He was labor’s greatest friend, created social safety nets for the average American. He restored faith in the market places, the banks and government. He created the Social Security, and rebuilt America’s devastated middle class. He was one of our greatest conservationists and he brought electricity to parts of rural America that had been ignored for 200 years.
He rallied the public, instilled great respect from the world at large, and inspired great enemies and opposition. He took on the Fascists when America wanted no part of that fight, created the United Nations, and built the “Arsenal of Democracy.” Through his actions at the Atlantic Conference in Argentia Bay, he put forth his vision of the world based on the “Four Freedoms.” His vision is the vision of today’s modern world; his vision is of the world community pulling together for the common good. FDR had to withstand an “American First” style isolationism that cut across almost all social and political barriers and subgroups. FDR had to use his unequaled mastery of the America political landscape to, on one hand, re-arm America, and on the other hand, battle the limitations of our Neutrality Laws and the passion of people like Charles Lindbergh, who were his most vocal critics.
FDR mobilized the American economy in an unprecedented way, as we fought an effective and remarkable two-ocean war. He selected and appointed our excellent overall leadership with his Joint Chief’s Command, led by Admiral William D. Leahy, who coordinated the activities of Generals Marshall and Arnold along with Admiral King. FDR’s selections, in all of the theaters of his responsibility, of MacArthur, Nimitz, Eisenhower, reflected excellent and carefully thought out judgment. Their choices of subordinates, which included Bedell-Smith, Clark, Bradley, Patton, Hodges, Simpson, Eaker, Doolittle, Stillwell, Halsey, Spruance, Vandergrift, Smith, Lemay and many others spelled eventual success. His speeches and cool leadership gave the people confidence after Pearl Harbor and the loss of the Philippines. FDR’s leadership of the wartime conferences at Argentia Bay, Quebec, Casablanca, Teheran and Yalta were the driving force behind victory and the post-war dominance of the West. His sponsoring of the Bretton Woods Conference had the most lasting effect on the future world’s economies vis-à-vis monetary stability. All in all FDR’s domestic leadership before and during the war were unprecedented. The late President, the architect of victory, won a hard earned election in 1944, with excellent majorities in Congress, even with his health suffering from advance heart disease and arterial sclerosis. One of FDR’s final achievements was the “GI Bill,” which brought educational benefits, training and opportunity to millions.
He was able to maintain his majorities in Congress all through his tenure in office, and even though the Democrats narrowly lost Congress in 1946, they quickly recovered their majorities until the Eisenhower landslide of 1952. But from 1954 until the 1980’s the FDR-New Deal coalition of Democrats maintained Congressional hegemony.
FDR’s legacy was one of not only unprecedented leadership, but of government innovation, reform and restructuring. Both have great-unequaled places in the history of our world and our time. Not only did James McGregor Burns write his wonderful book, “FDR, The Lion and the Fox,” but he followed it up with the award-winning, “FDR, The Soldier of Freedom.”
Both books still make great reading. FDR is the most written about man in history, and I had the pleasure of being at the Roosevelt Summer reading Fest at Hyde Park, NY this past June 21st. It was hosted by the FDR Library under the wonderful leadership of Ms. Cynthia Koch. I also had the pleasure of having a number of the authors there that day as a guest on my radio show, “The Advocates.” One can hear the broadcasts of those shows by accessing its archives at http://advocates-wvox.com.
Richard J. Garfunkel
Tarrytown, NY
You suffer from wild-eyed hero worship without any perspective, sadly.
A recent exchange of email with the LA chapter of the National Organization of Women leads me to believe that they will oppose anyone, man or woman, that does not support unrestricted abortion rights. While they give a nod to various other women’s causes, abortion is the ’sine qua non’ of NOW.