Obama might be the dumbest president we have ever had.

[Avinash_Tyagi]

Senlis said:

Jackson50 said:

Avinash_Tyagi said:

Senlis said:

Avinash_Tyagi said:
FDR didn't cause the great depression, he wasn't even in office until years after it began.

As for prolonging it, the only thing he did that prolonged it was trying to balance the budget and cut government spending in 1937

My mistake, I was typing this at work and got my sentances mixed up.

Hoover caused the great depression.  FDR prolonged it.  Look at this article by economist Thomas Sowell

http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/12/23/another_great_depression?page=1

"The Vedder and Gallaway statistics allow us to follow unemployment month by month. They put the unemployment rate at 5 percent in November 1929, a month after the stock market crash. It hit 9 percent in December-- but then began a generally downward trend, subsiding to 6.3 percent in June 1930.

That was when the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were passed, against the advice of economists across the country, who warned of dire consequences.

Five months after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, the unemployment rate hit double digits for the first time in the 1930s."

[...]

"The stock market crash, which has been blamed for the widespread suffering during the Great Depression of the 1930s, created no unemployment rate that was even half of what was created in the wake of the government interventions of Hoover and FDR.

Politically, however, Franklin D. Roosevelt could not have been more successful. After all, he was the only President of the United States elected four times in a row. He was a master of political rhetoric."

[...]

"Today, increasing numbers of scholars recognize that FDR's own policies were a further extension of interventions begun under Hoover. Moreover, the temporary rise in unemployment after the stock market crash was nowhere near the massive and long-lasting unemployment after government interventions."

 

Recheck your history, first off the Tariff was passed in 1930, well before FDR was elected in 1932, secondly unemployment was over 23.6% before FDR was elected, during his first term in office he reduced it below 17%

No, FDR did not cause the GD, and it is incorrect to attribute the S-H Tariff to FDR. Nonetheless, I would be surprised if even the most staunch FDR supports would say that the only thing he did to prolong the GD was to cut spending and balance the budget. The NIRA, for instance, was a disastrous piece of legislation. It exempted companies from antitrust legislation and artificially inflated wages.

 

It's funny how everyone is ready to misread the post to defend FDR.

I did not say FDR passed the tariff; Neither does Sowell.  Hoover passed the tariff, which caused the massive unemployment.

The point is that if FDR had left the economy alone when he came to office, the Great Depression would have ended a lot sooner.  Instead, he expanded on Hoover's legislature with his "New Deal" and prolonged it.  Economists know that during a recession (or depression), there is a certain cycle of going low and then rising back up the businesses have to do before the recession/depression ends.  Government interventions slow that cycle down.

In M.A.S.H., when Charles whould not talk to Hawkeye or B.J., one of the worst insult Hawkeye says to get Charles to speak is "Your family voted for Roosevelt......four times!!!!!!!"

And, before anyone says it, I am not saying Roosevelt is worse than Hoover.  It is that Roosevelt was so popular when in office, as opposed to what people think of him now.

 

 

 No actually the Depression wouldn't have ended sooner, I think you're forgetting that the Unemployment rate in 1932 was over 23%, that wasn't going to drop on its own, when the nation is that far below its full capacity, and in a consumer based society, you won't have a recovery from almost 1/4 unemployment on its own.  It took the larget war in human hisoty to put us back to full capacity