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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Mike M2 who wrote (117449)1/1/2009 12:10:06 PM
From: Knighty Tin  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 132070
 
The New Deal didn't work is a nice mantra for partisan politics, but does not explain how mfg. employment topped the highs of the 1920s in 1937. And even 14.6% unemployment beats 1932 levels by double digits.



To: Mike M2 who wrote (117449)1/1/2009 12:11:46 PM
From: longnshort5 Recommendations  Respond to of 132070
 
A response to Andrew Wilson's op-ed "Five Myths About the Great Depression."

By Donald J. Boudreaux
Business & Media Institute
11/4/2008 9:02:11 AM

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To the Editor:

Andrew Wilson is right: the New Deal did not end the Great Depression ("Five Myths About the Great Depression," November 4). No less an authority than FDR's Treasury secretary and close friend, Henry Morganthau, conceded this fact to Congressional Democrats in May 1939: "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong ... somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises ... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... And an enormous debt to boot!"*

Indeed, FDR's market-suffocating policies are almost surely what put the "Great" in "Great Depression."

Sincerely,

Donald J. Boudreaux

* Burton Folsom, Jr., New Deal or Raw Deal? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), p. 2.

businessandmedia.org

The great fact (as in GREAT Depression) that must be explained is the inordinate length of that severe downturn. Hoover's own policies -- contrary to popular myth -- were interventionist. Roosevelt's policies, reinforced by increasingly anti-private-property rhetoric from him and his advisers during the 1930s, ensured that the depression lasted far longer than it would otherwise have lasted. The facts are clear that unemployment (no matter how measured) remained high for the duration of the 1930s and capital investment abysmally low. As FDR's own Treasury Sec. Morgenthau conceded in 1939, it's difficult to square these facts with claims that FDR's policies worked well.

Posted by: Don Boudreaux | Nov 11, 2008 7:19:20 AM

cafehayek.typepad.com



To: Mike M2 who wrote (117449)1/1/2009 2:02:18 PM
From: Pogeu Mahone  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 132070
 
This adds real value to our country.

Take a ride on the Blue Ridge: blueridgeparkway.org

Then take a hike.-g-

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Building the Parkway through mountainous terrain was a monumental labor. Authorized in the 1930s as a Depression-era public works project, the Parkway was more than a half-century in the making. It was the nation's first, and ultimately longest, rural parkway, connecting Shenandoah National Park in Virginia with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina. Enduring standards for parkway engineering and design were pioneered here.