Who is still glad we didn't end up with McCain?

Boneman

Boneman

Well-Known Member
It really wouldnt have mattered other than we would have had a tough guy instead of what we have now.

We would of at least had a halfway hot vice prez to look at and listen too. You betcha!!

Biden is a freakin idiot.
 
olosto

olosto

New Member
TheBrutalTruth said:
Yeah, but they would all want to get in her pants. Maybe we could have whored her out in exchange for peace amongst all the nations...
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Its not like we still can't. Just waive a nieman marcus card in her direction and I sure she would, err saddle up for anything, lol..
 
olosto

olosto

New Member
braker642 said:
im not b/c obama hasnt done shit but put us in deeper debt and blow smoke up our ass just to get votes
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Really how so? And is this any different that it would have been? Do no forget it was Bush that started the bailout mess. I still maintain that the great depression show us that if the govenment does nothing.. you could be fucked for 15 years..
 
TheBrutalTruth

TheBrutalTruth

Well-Known Member
olosto said:
Really how so? And is this any different that it would have been? Do no forget it was Bush that started the bailout mess. I still maintain that the great depression show us that if the govenment does nothing.. you could be fucked for 15 years..
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Lots of government intervention during the great depression though, but unlike now the intervention was a combination of useful like infrastructure spending (TVA (not that I approve of the interference in the markets, but it's better than this bailing out of the banks.)) and useless/wrong like devaluation of the currency in an attempt to brainwash the sheeple into believing that prices were re-inflating instead of coming out and explaining that as a result of productivity gains it would be the natural trend of things for prices to fall as the time-value of the labor involved in producing them was reduced, and thus deflation could be a good thing especially if wages remained bottom sticky and didn't fall as quickly as prices because it would allow for the working classes to purchase more with their paychecks.

No, instead the government intentionally inflates the currency and prices, a fraud that it has continued to this day, and is still continuing.


Random thought but I'm thinking that the deflation threatened the wealthy (less profits) and benefited the poor (more spending power) where as the artificial inflation benefited the wealthy (greater appearance of profits) and hurt the poor (less spending power.) So FDR's leaving the gold standard was a bad move.
 
olosto

olosto

New Member
I think the problem was early on in the depression. Noting was done early on. It was not untill everyone was up to their heads in the shit that the gov began doing anything from how I understand my history.
 
TheBrutalTruth

TheBrutalTruth

Well-Known Member
olosto

olosto

New Member
Depression of 29 on.. The panic that the failing banks caused etc. The gov let it all happen and from what I understand did not do shit about it for quite some time.

You will need to fill in the blanks for me from 1920 to the crash of 29. I honestly do not remember/know my history that well.
 
TheBrutalTruth

TheBrutalTruth

Well-Known Member
olosto said:
Depression of 29 on.. The panic that the failing banks caused etc. The gov let it all happen and from what I understand did not do shit about it for quite some time.

You will need to fill in the blanks for me from 1920 to the crash of 29. I honestly do not remember/know my history that well.
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http://www.calvin-coolidge.org/html/the_harding_coolidge_prosperit.html

On March 4, 1921, President Woodrow Wilson relinquished the office of the presidency to Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding. The state of the union was poor. "With the exception of Lincoln, probably no president in our national history has taken office with as pressing a burden of unresolved questions." Those were the words of the Nation of February 1921. The national economy was in the depths of a depression with an unemployment rate of 20% after a runaway inflation.
On April 12,1921, President Harding went before a contentious Congress and presented his program for economic recovery which he called "A Return to Normalcy". Harding's normalcy program consisted of the following measures.
1) A call for a national budget program (which was vetoed by his predecessor).
2) National debt reduction
3) Tax reduction
4) An emergency tariff to protect American industry and farm commodities.
5) Farm relief legislation (farm bankruptcies were up 20% from 1914).
6) Immigration restrictions to protect American jobs.
President Harding pushed hard for his program and got it passed by Congress in 1921. By late 1922, the economy began to turn around. Harding did not live to see it, but his normalcy program proved to be the foundation that Coolidge prosperity was built on. Harding's successor, Calvin Coolidge had the wisdom to stay the course and build on Harding's program. The American people were the beneficiaries of the unprecedented prosperity of the 1920's. Unemployment was pared from its high in 1921 of 20% to an average of 3.3% for the remainder of the decade. The misery index which is a combination of unemployment and inflation had its sharpest decline in U.S. history under President Harding. The Gross National Product averaged 7% from 1924 to 1929. Wages, profits, and productivity all made substantial gains during the 1920's. Harding slashed federal spending by two billion from Wilson's last year and Coolidge maintained that spending level of 3.3 billion per year for the rest of the decade. The Harding-Coolidge tax cuts produced increased revenue that went to cut the national debt left by Wilson by one-third.
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I wasn't even really aware of it until a couple month's ago, and I don't remember any specific in depth discussion of the reaction the government had to the depression of 1920 being really discussed in school. Not like the Great Depression was...

http://modern-us-history.suite101.com/article.cfm/from_normalcy_to_great_depression

When the economy turned sluggish again by mid-decade, the Reserve banks relaxed credit requirements and created over $500 million in new money, and made loans of more than $4 billion available to the American public. It was hoped that such an economic stimulus would jump-start the economy. However, it had the opposite effect as consumers fell further into debt while the prices of real estate and stocks skyrocketed. Coolidge also supported the Revenue Act (1926), which reduced taxes on higher incomes but provided little relief for middle-income families.
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Sounds freakishly like Bush's actions in 2001 - 2003...

Create and throw money at the problem
Encourage the banks to slash interest rates
Slash taxes on the rich, but only provide minimal relief for the working and middle classes


Also sounds like Obama's policy now

Create more money than before and throw it at the problem
Encourage banks to slash interest rates

Except now he's just providing minimal tax relief to the working and middle classes and taxing the rich even more.

One would imagine that the economy is going to correct itself regardless (there is also considerable debate around whether or not FDR really did help the country in the 30s.)

I mean, the United States has been having economic panics since it was created.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States


Here's one from the above list

Long Depression 1873–1896 &0000000000000023.00000023 years – The collapse of the Vienna Stock Exchange caused a depression that spread throughout the world. It is important to note that during this period, the global industrial production greatly increased. In the United States, for example, industrial output increased fourfold.

23 years that makes the Great Depression seem just kind of middle length.

Then there was another that was 7 years, and three that were 16, 18 and 20 years respectively.
 
olosto

olosto

New Member
Ahhh thx for the history lesson! I guess I only remember the great depression from studies. I would agree that the economy will correct, and it will be interesting to see the results of this experiment. Since the conditions are soo similar but very different as well.
 
TheBrutalTruth

TheBrutalTruth

Well-Known Member
olosto said:
yea, can't rep ya on the last post so here is a public +rep
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Thanks, and I wasn't even aware of the Depression of 1920 until recently, so I'm still learning all the small details of it.

Interesting stuff, though I just hope that my opinion that the economy will recover in spite of government actions is right.

Though in truth I don't think a lot of people (aside from those with out jobs) have really let it get them down.

I know I went to the bar last night and it was full of people having fun. So even if such action is a result of the depression it is also the seed of economic recovery, because ultimately the economy isn't driven by our basic necessities (if a farmer was just content to feed himself we'd all starve) but by our desire for books, movies, games, consumer devices and other goods and services that are produced by people that have to come up with something to trade for food.
 
P

Parker

Well-Known Member
olosto said:
Really how so? And is this any different that it would have been? Do no forget it was Bush that started the bailout mess. I still maintain that the great depression show us that if the govenment does nothing.. you could be fucked for 15 years..
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The Government did a bunch which is why the US was in such a prolonged depression.

FDR allowed businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies."

In the three years following the implementation of Roosevelt's policies, wages in 11 key industries averaged 25 percent higher than they otherwise would have done, the economists calculate. But unemployment was also 25 percent higher than it should have been, given gains in productivity.

Meanwhile, prices across 19 industries averaged 23 percent above where they should have been, given the state of the economy. With goods and services that much harder for consumers to afford, demand stalled and the gross national product floundered at 27 percent below where it otherwise might have been.

"High wages and high prices in an economic slump run contrary to everything we know about market forces in economic downturns," Ohanian said. "As we've seen in the past several years, salaries and prices fall when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal policies short-circuited the market's self-correcting forces."

Without competition, wholesale prices remained inflated, averaging 14 percent higher than they would have been without the troublesome practices.

By 1939 wages in protected industries remained 24 percent to 33 percent above where they should have been, based on 1929 figures. By 1939 the U.S. unemployment rate was 17.2 percent, down somewhat from its 1933 peak of 24.9 percent but still remarkably high.

Recovery came only after the Department of Justice dramatically stepped enforcement of antitrust cases nearly four-fold and organized labor suffered a string of setbacks, the economists found.

Unemployment was high, many of those people could not afford to eat. The people who didn't work for industries where wages were fixed and artificially high couldn't afford to pay the high prices. Farmers were actually plowing under crops while Americans were in food lines.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx
 
P

Parker

Well-Known Member
TheBrutalTruth said:
I know I went to the bar last night and it was full of people having fun.
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People are more depressed and looking for the quick fix. Invest in booze and candy bars. Since we are talking economics I thought I'd throw that in.

btw A ton of banks failed in 1921 and the government didnt throw money at them. We bounced back fairly quick.
 
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