[quote=patb][quote=Carl Veritas]How the U.S. got out of the last one might provide a clue:
Abandonment of Keynes inspired FDR policies “coincided” with the recovery of the 1940s.
The reduction of the federal budget from $98.4 billion in 1945 to $33 billion in 1948. Private sector production increased by almost one-third in 1946 alone, as private capital investment increased for the first time in 18 years. (from T. Di Lorenzo)
The bust is the way the economy adjust to the lower consumer demand, by liquidation of poor business positions and lowering of prices to market clearing levels. Government intervention only serves to delay the recovery.[/quote]
Um, in 2939 there was a War, you know?
And in 45? we won that war.
So all that spending was going to end.
The Great Depression was moderated by the FDR policies. The CCC, WPA and other acts got people doing things.
We spent 4 years following Hoovers polcies, that didn’t work. FDR’s policies did.
FDR’s policies also set up 40 years of prosperity.[/quote]
Well, lets not rewrite history.
Harold Ickes, FDR’s interior secretary, said in his diary covering the early part of the New Deal that it accomplished what the powers were trying to do in Germany and Italy, but did so in a “more orderly way.” FDR represented the absolute corporate takeover of the US government. Domestic policy was turned over to GE’s Reginald Jones, Averell Harriman of Brown Brothers and Root, Union Pacific and Union Bank (Hitler’s banker), and Herbert Lehman of… Lehman Brothers
Medium sized business men who weren’t part of the inner club, and some big ones whose interests did not include significant foreign holdings, hated FDR, even plotted against him, but that’s the essence of divisions within the monied class between those who benefitted from the centralization and those who didn’t. Google business plot for details
He knew the New Deal was a colossal bust and a populist uprising( of the more communist/socialist variety unlike todays tea-baggers) was just around the corner. The 30s were rife with populist uprisings amongst the commoners with the state opposing by force. He HAD to get the people behind him in the best way that we know how, WAR… He cut off the Japanese oil supply in the Philippines all but ensuring a Japanese response somewhere.
What brought us prosperity was the whole industrialized world being destroyed by the war while America being the only one left with any industrial capacity combined with sitting on a ocean of oil and abundant resources.
That brought us up the 70s where it has been downhill since for the middle class and wealth disparity grew to industrial revolution levels.
Now, Obama is in the same place as FDR was. Today, however, safety nets are in place as well as decades of anti-socialist/resistance propaganda to quell populist uprising.
Yes, people are no different today. When they are cut off from a means to survive they will turn to crime or organize and protest. History is quite clear on that.
