The Political Environment: Conservatives Reprise Their FDR-Hating

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Conservatives Reprise Their FDR-Hating

Talk about living in the past.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...: If you noted the article quotes Paul Krugman. That guy is almost always wrong. Even the hack NYT must offer retractions to what he says.; January 3, 2009 at 1:32 PM
Anonymous said...: Sirota - as usual - is wrong about government spending and economic recovery.

But - as usual - you and the other liberals won't let facts deter you from your appointed tasks.; January 3, 2009 at 1:58 PM
James Rowen said...: To Anon. #1; Yeah, that Krugman! How'd he win that Nobel Prize?; January 3, 2009 at 4:28 PM
James Rowen said...: Sirota wrong - - as usual? And your evidence is???; January 3, 2009 at 4:28 PM
Anonymous said...: None of FDRs interventions and government boondoggles ended the huge rise in unemployment nor did they fix the struggling economy.

Period. End of debate.

There is no evidence of any kind to support the fantasy that massive government spending will fix the economy.

As for the Nobel Prize - it has become worthless with age.

It's become merely a political award.

David Sirota being wrong is an almost weekly occurence, his problem begins with being a leftist and much like all leftists, everything he comments on must be made to fit his dim world view.; January 3, 2009 at 5:27 PM
Anonymous said...: You are touting the Nobel Prize? I beleive Al Gore and Yaser Arefat each won a Nobel prize, so your point being? If government spending helps the economy so much, the economy would be much worse if we were NOT in Iraq and Afganastan, right?

The only way to get the economy going again is middle class tax cuts, for those that do pay taxes and, cut government spending to sustainable levels, and to keep the Bush tax cuts perm.

Bush's problem was that he cut taxes but did not cut spending, he increased tremendously. That is the problem.; January 3, 2009 at 8:22 PM
James Rowen said...: Period. End of Debate.

And attacking Krugman because he's a leftist?

Not much substance there, I'm afraid.

People I know who lived through the Depression of the 20's and 30's credit Roosevelt with saving Democracy. Try and speak with some of them while they are still around.; January 3, 2009 at 10:10 PM
Anonymous said...: James - without looking, can you tell us all how Krugman's Nobel Prize qualifies him to opine on the affects of Keynesian economic policies had on the Great Depression?; January 3, 2009 at 11:33 PM
Anonymous said...: James,

In all seriousness and putting partisanship aside, I have. Many believe the FDR myth, and quite a few know better.

It was a fascinating time, and we are beginning to relive it (unfortunately).

Progressives got their second wind from FDR because anti-corpratist Republicans joined forces with the anti-statist progressives and worked to rebuild the progressive movement.

Obviously it failed, but these bailouts and federal investments divide today as much as they did back then.

We are in very odd times, but let's be brutally honest.

The make-work jobs Roosevelt created had zero imapact on the economy. Yes, they did help quite a few families avoid the soup line, but for many good reasons, the make work jobs were created to employ those who would rather die than join the ranks of the soup line.

But, the make-work jobs didn't make the lives of the make-workers much better than the soup-line takers.

The difference in that generation is that most people didn't want to take welfare to get by.

Another difference is that our national debt was a tiny fraction of our economic output - even in challenged times.

Today, none of these things apply. Our national debt in a good year is a significant percentage of our national output and a significantly larger portion of our population would rather take a government hand-out over a make-work program.

As much as you may like to blame free markets for our economic woes, I would argue that we have finally met the actuarial end of the New Deal and the policies devised by Roosevelt's brain trust.

So many of the brain trust and their chosen minions helped build the auto-industry pension piramid and government employee pension benefit structure... it is just plain sad.

On the other hand, I will stand with you to fight the federal infrastructure bailout.

Obviously for different reasons, but ultimately we must all fight to prevent our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren from shouldering the burdens placed on them from those who merely seek reelection in the next 2 to 4 years.

The uborn already owe about 435,000. Do we really want to add to that debt?; January 4, 2009 at 12:14 AM
James Rowen said...: To Anon: With unemployment at what, 25% and growing in Depression I, I'd say that what you call make-work jobs was a necessity. I'd also argue that a country that felt itself modern by contemporary standards that didn't provide those jobs would be a failed state.

I think you are too focused on what happened a political eon ago and not focused enough on much more recent policy, especially deregulation, which while bipartisan, was certainly the Bush administratiobn's guiding philosophy.

I think there will be economic recovery through green production, and invention, from a comnbination of government assistance and pricvate sector initiative.

I'm hoping for partnerships, and I also think this is a long process towards a different paradigm.

I think GM and Ford will make it, but not Chrysler, and I would not have given Chrysler a dime, especially since it has been taken private.; January 4, 2009 at 11:51 AM
Anonymous said...: If we don't look back an "eon", we may find ourselves repeating the mistakes.

While it's been discussed and debated endlessly, deregulation had very little to with the financial meltdown.

Perhaps, to some extent, the loose rules on the rating firms - but even then, much of their failure to properly evaluate the quality of various investments was skewed by the government-backed mortages.

In other words, the tranches of debt insturments contained government guaranteed debt so the risks were persumed to be lower.

The potential for failure in the housing market could have been prevented by changing the loan standards - unfortunately efforts to do just that were blocked.

There is no excuse in a rational market for "no check" (unverified) loans or 100% mortgages.

Fannie and Freddie were out of control.

The other driving force was the Federal Reserve and I think it is quite safe to blame George Bush for making a very bad choice with Bernanke.

Many on the left have, without citing examples, claimed that this meltdown was a failure of the free market.

Bernanke is no free marketeer and George Bush had very little use for free market principles either.

Bernanke's monetary policies excellerated the collapse of the credit markets.

While congress should have acted to tighten up home loan requirements for government-backed credit, the Federal Reserve should have raised interest rates.

Over the last eight years, the Federal Reserve poured cheap money in the financial markets and what we experienced was a period of false economic growth that consisted largely of consumer debt.

This level of debt is going to make it a very long and difficult climb back to economic recovery.

To be sure, every move that Bush has made since the bubble burst has been wrong.

Unfortunately, Obama has assured us that he will continue these bad policies - the only difference is that he intends to do the same wrong things in bigger ways.

So, getting back to FDR - if only people would look at the data and compare the economic response to the government spending employed by FDR - they would clearly see that it will not make things better. On the contrary, these policies will make our economy much worse.; January 4, 2009 at 12:31 PM
Anonymous said...: Oh... and here is a letter to the editor regarding David Sirota's silly column.

In an article in Salon on January 2, 2009, David Sirota quoted you as stating, “One would be very hard-pressed to find a serious professional historian who believes that the New Deal prolonged the Depression."

If the quotation accurately represents your views, it is very mistaken.

Off the top of my head, I can name “several serious professional historians” who would probably argue (and argue strongly) “that the New Deal prolonged the Depression.”

http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=821

If you love FDR - so be it - that's just great. But sound public policy must be based on reality not romantic and false notions.; January 4, 2009 at 1:15 PM