Obama=Hitler (?)
The lack of results so far from the various “stimulus” plans seems to have got the American Left worried already. How else can one explain the appearance in the NYT of an article which declares that Obama’s actions are similar to Hitler’s and that Hitler was successful in his economic policies? I would never have predicted an article like that in the NYT in a million years!
Taranto writes at some length about the broader aspects of the comparison so I will confine myself to the economic argument in the article. Although I am a former High School Economics teacher, I am not fully engaged with economic statistics these days so I will speak in general terms and hope that a more detailed critique will emerge from elsewhere.
The Hitler comparison is in fact only one of the dubious comparisons used in the article. The writer declares successes where few others would. That the Hoover/FDR policies did not cure unemployment is, I think, undeniable but to our NYT writer they were a success — as were the policies behind the Japanese doldrums of the 1990s. So one must suspect from the outset some flimsiness in the Hitler comparison too.
Much has been written about the German economic recovery of the 1930s but the first point that needs to be made is surely that Germany’s position at that time was very different from that of the USA today. The twin impacts of a currency totally destroyed by inflation under the Weimar regime and a continuing demand for “reparations” were huge negative factors for the German economy at that time. And the large reductions in those problems were more the work of the brilliant Hjalmar Schacht at the Reichsbank than anyone else. Just relieving Germany of those problems was a very good “stimulus” to an economic recovery.
And it was also the manoeuvring of Schacht that enabled Hitler to finance his public works programmes. The programmes concerned did of course run up huge debts and it was only Schacht that kept Germany out of some form of bankruptcy. But Schacht could only do so much and by 1939 Germany was effectively “broke” and it is often contended that Hitler’s march to war in that year was as much an economic necessity as an ideological imperative. Germany’s generals certainly did not think that they were ready for war at that time. They felt that their buildup would not be complete until a couple of years further down the track. And the outbreak of war in 1939 in fact saw Germany facing French forces that were in most ways numerically superior to it.
So Hitler went to war to loot the gold in the Bank of France and elsewhere as much as for any other reason. Thanks to the brilliance of General von Manstein he initially succeeded in his objectives. One shudders to think what might have happened if he had put Manstein in charge of the Russian campaign.
Obama does not have to go to war to deal with the debt problem he is creating. Because America is the provider of the world’s reserve currency, he can simply print all the greenbacks he likes to pay his government’s bills. And he has already started doing that on a large scale. That is of course called “inflation” and there are plenty of commentaries from all sorts of sources on the evils of that. That it rewards debtors and penalizes savers has always been obvious but in the present case it has also started the process of snatching away from the world its reserve currency. And the consequences of discouraging saving (and hence capital formation) worldwide must indeed be grim.
The gold bugs are of course as happy as pigs in mud at the moment and gold exporting countries, such as Australia, are doing a roaring trade. But the net effect of that is to increase the Reserve Bank of Australia’s holding of American paper — and it is precisely that which now seems unwise. So from that alone one can see that the gold standard has its own problems — which is why it was abandoned many years ago.
Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here
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Posted by JonJayRay on April 4, 2009 9:13 am
» Filed Under Anti-Capitalism, Economy, History, News, Recession/Depression
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3 Responses to “Obama=Hitler (?)”
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Um no let’s leave that kind of hyperbole to the leftards
i think that the normal response when somebody is compared with hitler is one of dissent based on the negative aspects of hitler’s reputation. Several facts are often overlooked when examining hitler’s track record and performance as a leader. In the wake of WW1 Germany’s economy was the in shambles, certainly the weakest in western europe, and the fact remains that through industrial investment and creative stimulus arrangements the nation was nurtured back onto the world economic stage in about 20 years, a relatively short period of time. Much of the things that the Nazi party based its economic growth on were dependent on the eventual imperialization of the surrounding region. It is no secret that the business of war and occupation has long been one of the crutches of many nation’s economic movement, statistically it is one of the most reliable and commonly used method of bolstering a country’s economic activity. One should note that while a withdrawal from Iraq has been announced an escalation in Afghanastan has also been announced. While I am not a Nazi, nor am I a Hitler supporter, I do think that this country has been emulating many of the elements of hitler’s model for quite some time, though some of the truly innovative ideas that we have forgone tend to trouble me, athiesm for example removes the question of the religious interest in politics, something that can only serve to benefit the common man. The persecution of any group of people cannot be commended in any way, but we must remember the fact that this countries’ early success and the groundwork for or more recent domination on the world scale was laid at least partially on the backs of kidnapped slave laborers. In addition we have long been engaged in the occupation game, we stole Hawaii and Alaska, we stole the panama canal, we share occupational interests in the middle east, asia, and africa, we fuel conflicts to sell ammunition and eventually sell construction and modernization services. people need to realize that we as a nation are more similar to Nazi’s than any other nation on the face of the earth and it is only fair that occasionally the similarities are recognized.
In addition, depending on what side of the wealth border you reside, the removal of the gold standard either destroyed your future by replacing your gold vouchers with worthless trade coupons, or it cemented your position of economic stability. unfortunately for most of us we don’t live on the right side of that border. less than one hundredth of a percent (.01%) of the worlds population benefits from a money system that is not backed by gold. 100% percent of the federal income tax is used to pay interest on federal loans for the purchase of incredibly inflated U.S. dollars. $1 is actually worth less than 4 cents. The removal of gold from the economy created a credit based economy, which leaves us in the situation that we are now in, the national debt can be broken down to show that every citizen owes about $50k to the federal reserve bank alone, despite this we still max out credit cards and mortgage homes that we cannot afford acquiring additional debt. An economy based on credit is destined for failure, it is only a matter of time.