They Say That History Repeats Itself...You Can Say That Again!

I've been reading over the years about the Great Depression because I find it interesting as an economist and social historian of sorts. I hope you find this useful as we prepare to die as a nation.

Below is a reprint from the whitehouse.gov website, "Presidents" page. It is fascinating (hmmm--fascist, fascinating...interesting) to see the similarities between the Great Depression and our current Great Recession That is Like the Great Depression Only Worse in Many Ways. I emboldened the type for emphasis, so read this:

He [F.D. Roosevelt] was elected President in November 1932, to the first of four terms. By March there were 13,000,000 unemployed, and almost every bank was closed. In his first 'hundred days,' he proposed, and Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform, especially through the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

By 1935 the Nation had achieved some measure of recovery, but businessmen and bankers were turning more and more against Roosevelt's New Deal program. They feared his experiments, were appalled because he had taken the Nation off the gold standard and allowed deficits in the budget, and disliked the concessions to labor. Roosevelt responded with a new program of reform: Social Security, heavier taxes on the wealthy, new controls over banks and public utilities, and an enormous work relief program for the unemployed.

In 1936 he was re-elected by a top-heavy margin. Feeling he was armed with a popular mandate, he sought legislation to enlarge the Supreme Court, which had been invalidating key New Deal measures. Roosevelt lost the Supreme Court battle, but a revolution in constitutional law took place. Thereafter the Government could legally regulate the economy.

There are two ways at which to ponder this. The first is that the Usurpent agrees witht the FDR doctrine of huge, centralized government at the expense of the taxpayer and that it helped turn America around to its fine state today. The second is that FDR was on the right track but didn't go far enough for the Amerika he loves. That Amerika is the one where you are owned by the government and you've lost your freedom.

Back in the day (1930s) even Henry Morgenthau, FDR's Tim Geithner, was irate over FDR's failed New Deal. I say failure for, if the idea then was to reduce unemployment, it failed. Even in 1939 the unemployment rate was at about 20 percent. Morgenthau said, "We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it [New Deal bailouts] does not work."

By the way, our normal unemployment rate is about five percent. Normal means people who can work but choose not to or who are actively seeking employment and cannot find it. Our current national unemployment rate is under ten percent. Although there are pockets of certain states like California where rates are close to 20%, the average unemployment rate is not as bad as it seems. That sounds callous to those who may be reading this who have lost their jobs, but it is encouraging to the extent that there are still less-than-ideal jobs to be had and that the normal rate of unemployment is actually only up about 5%.

I've stated before that with the Usurpent's blinged out version of the New Deal that what comes next is an increase in taxes to counter the government spending. This is just basic equilibrium theory of public sector economics. Where FDR taxed the most wealthy at seventy-nine and later ninety percent in 1935, the Usurpent will similarly follow. In fact, he has begun with the attack on AIG exec bonuses, even when he and his Socialist Party set them up ahead of time in H.R.1 (the Stimulus Bill). Then there's Cap and Trade, which will kill small businesses. This will be addressed in another blog.

As I've read in the excruciatingly painful Conference Report of H.R. 1, Agriculture has been allocated what appears to be about $16 Billion. When FDR created the first farmer subsidies that basically paid them not to produce certain crops, did you know that we had to import those same crops to the tune of 35 million bushels of corn, 13 million bushels of wheat and 36 million pounds of cotton? Does that make sense to you? Even in 2009 we are still doing it.

I would suggest that the Usurpent has studied FDR's regime hard and for a long time. You should be convinced that he is working for the Amerika that he loves.

At the top of this page are two recent graphs (February 2009) from the Federal Bureau of Labor and Statistics that depict what the Usurpent is after. The first graph indicates the growth of labor in the government sector. The second graph portrays employment in the private sector. And there you have it.