Feel better?

[Joe]

It's important to note when evaluating the Roosevelt Presidency and drawing loose comparisons, that in the end, the Great Depression came to a close, and WWII was won.
The scope of those challenges was unfathomable. Interesting that people are still arguing the merits of FDR. There was no free-market solution to the Great Depression.

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by Joe

It's important to note when evaluating the Roosevelt Presidency and drawing loose comparisons, that in the end, the Great Depression came to a close, and WWII was won.

Of course, comparisons are always flawed. Every instance is unique. A bit of strategy may be learned from a previous similarity, but insistence that exactly the same remedies for what is not exactly the same reality will lead to imperfect solutions that will be resolved by seeing what is new, what is different. I was, mostly, being tongue in cheek with my "comparison" of Obama's tactics to Roosevelt's--especially the part about letting loose the hounds. I certainly hope that Obama isn't EXACTLY following FDR's solution as some are suggesting. The similarities are, though, a little scary.

Rather than the New Deal, getting into the war and winning it was, perhaps, Roosevelt's best accomplishment. His withdrawal from the aftermath, the willingness to let Stalin have Eastern Europe, was, probably his worst.

The scope of those challenges was unfathomable. Interesting that people are still arguing the merits of FDR. There was no free-market solution to the Great Depression.

If the scope was unfathomable, then no strategy could be rational. Any plan to solve the unknown is merely throwing wet noodles on a wall and seeing which will stick. Hope that is not happening now. Hindsight may allow us to theorize what went wrong and what went right. The hindsight of many economists, certainly free-market economists, Austrian school economists, believe that allowing "the market" to correct itself would have been a quicker fix (perhaps more painful in the short run) than government intervention that tried to soften the blow.

Arguing merits does become a domain of historians. Analyzing a situation in its midst is fraught with the immediate, emotional and political arguments seeking to gain the turf. The calmer reflection of disinterested analysts is more useful. An example would be how Reagan was, during his presidency, viewed as a disaster, but now, historians place him somewhere in the the top ten.

[Joe]

Originally Posted by detbuch

If the scope was unfathomable, then no strategy could be rational. Any plan to solve the unknown is merely throwing wet noodles on a wall and seeing which will stick. Hope that is not happening now.

The thinking was (and is) that launching simultaneous initiatives, even if money was wasted was necessary because to wait for a single or small group of possible solutions to have an effect would severely prolong the crisis if they did not work. The New Deal was fluid; initiatives came and went.

And yes, it was not until we started arming England did things really improve. What Roosevelt accomplished was not saving the economy, but saving the republic.

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by Joe

The thinking was (and is) that launching simultaneous initiatives, even if money was wasted was necessary because to wait for a single or small group of possible solutions to have an effect would severely prolong the crisis if they did not work. The New Deal was fluid; initiatives came and went.

And yes, it was not until we started arming England did things really improve. What Roosevelt accomplished was not saving the economy, but saving the republic.

I agree that FDR did not save the economy. The contention is that he prolonged, even exacerbated the depression. He certainly didn't start it. Hoover did. And it wasn't Hoover's implementation of free market policies, but his Federal Government interventionist policies such as the Smoot-Hawley tariffs (which eventually contributed to the Worldwide depression and WWII), his Government manipulated high wage policies when profits and prices were falling, his increase of Government spending for subsidy and relief schemes, the Feds deflation of the money supply, and, though he lowered taxes on the poorest, he offered no incentives to the wealthy to invest in expansion or new business--all this compounded by him signing a congressional massive tax increase. The free market had survived several previous depressions, that were also influenced by Government tinkering, but not like the massive tinkering by Hoover and what was about to happen under FDR.

During his campaign, FDR blasted Hoover for spending and taxing too much, boosting the national debt, choking off trade (Smoot-Hawley), and putting millions on the dole--of reckless and extravagant spending, of "trying to center the control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible," and of presiding over "the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history." His VP candidate accused Hoover of "leading the country down the path of Socialism."

And FDR was right. He won in a landslide and his party platform called for a 25% reduction in Federal spending, a balanced Federal budget, a sound gold currency "to be preserved at all hazards," the removal of government from areas that belonged more appropriately to private enterprise and an end to Hoover's extravagant farm programs. What followed under FDR, instead, was a breaking of all those promises and an era of Hoover policies on steroids with some particularly destructive, anti-free-market regulations added by FDR. One of FDR's New Deal policy maker's. Rexford Tugwell said "we didn't admit it at the time, but practically the whole new deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started."

The point is that the simultaneous initiatives that you speak of were not only unecessary, but destructive. It was not a collapse of the free-market, but exactly those government initiatives that exacerbated and prolonged a recession/depression into the "Great Depression," those initiatives being: Central Bank mismanagement; trade crushing tariffs; incentive sapping taxes; mind-numbing controls on production and competition; senseless destruction of crops and cattle; coercive labor laws TO NAME A FEW. FDR's Treasury Secretary said in his private diary that their massive spending did not work, that they did not make good on their promises, that there was as much unemployment as when they started, and they had created an enormous debt to boot.

The Republic was not in danger due to the economic "crisis," but due to FDR's VP's assertion that the Hoover (and ultilmately the FDR) policies "were leading the country down the path of Socialism."

A lot of the above governmental initiatives, tinkering, et. al. certainly reflect actions of following administrations with a growing trend in that direction, and eerily echo some Obama policies.