Vancouver Secrets

FDR Lengthened The Great Depression

photo credit: pingnews.com

One of the new Liberal key talking points is that FDR oversaw the Great Depression – Obama and Biden have repeatedly stated this. The implication is that the left can steer us through this financial crisis.

The truth is that FDR actually extended the great depression by 7 years.

From UCLA:

Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

After scrutinizing Roosevelt’s record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

“Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump,” said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Economics. “We found that a relapse isn’t likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies.”

Sounds awfully close to what is happening now.

When you hear praise of FDR’s New Deal, be wary.

Substitute Obama for Roosevelt…

From A New Deal
Roosevelt’s Obama’s task in the fall campaign was a relatively simple one: avoid doing anything to alarm the electorate while allowing Hoover’s Bush’s enormous unpopularity to drive voters to the Democrats. He traveled extensively giving speeches filled with sunny generalities; he was perpetually genial; and he continued to criticize Hoover’ Bush for failing to balance the budget and for expanding the bureaucracy. But he only occasionally gave indications of his own increasingly progressive agenda. On one such occasion, at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, he outlined in general terms a new set of government responsibilities: for an “enlightened administration” to help the economy revive, to distribute “wealth and products more equitably,” and to provide “everyone an avenue to possess himself of a portion of that plenty sufficient for his needs, through his own work.”

The rest is history.