In busts Indiana Jones...

"That Hoover Model 0 BELONGS IN A MUSEUM!"

Let me try to rephrase your basic premise:

"Hey, isn't a spending freeze what Herbert Hoover did to make the Great Depression great? Isn't it what John McCain and the Republicans suggested doing in 2008 when they got crushed? Why the fuck is Obama talking about implementing it now? Will someone please, put a fucking stake through the heart of this vampiric conservative ideology that's been slowly killing our country for decades now?!"

Now that the SOTU is in the books, it seems like the freeze was the token offering to centrism in what was certainly not a defeatist speech.

I don't know about you....

But me and J. Edgar Hoover are proud to say that these fine young men never smoked pot.

>> ^marinara:
1. You can't say that doing nothing is what we got Hoover to do.

I didn't say that doing nothing is what "you" (meaning Austrian Economists, apparently) got Hoover to do. I said getting Hoover and Mellon to let banks fail, balance budgets, and adhere to the gold standard are what "you" got Hoover to do, and what Austrians are calling for Obama to do.

2. Hoover provided loan guarantees to the banks just like Obama/Bush
3. Hoover pledged public money towards building projects
4. Hoover made business leaders pledge to keep employment high
5. Hoover created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to lend money and unfreeze the credit markets.

He did all of that in 1932, and not on the scale needed. Not every ounce of what Hoover did was wrong, nor was every ounce of what Roosevelt did right.

6. Hoover made the depression worse by tinkering with interest rates and taxes.

Oddly nonspecific what you say there with "tinkering". Hoover/Mellon raised interest rates and taxes. Obama/Bernanke cut them.

There is no rule, that says you always boost the monetary supply in recessions. Is there?

Actually, that is the short-form advice of mainstream economists. There is quite a long list of exceptions to the rule, though none apply right now.

Are all economic challenges the same? No!

I'm not saying they're all the same, but there's a lot about the current economic crisis that's very similar to the Great Depression.

Why is it so hard to believe the words in this video?

Because it's internally inconsistent, and cherry-picks facts around an obvious political agenda!

Is it so hard to believe that the Fed is operating on policies that benefit the few people who actually own the Fed?

Actually, no. But not all anti-Fed propaganda is created equal. Saying "Goldman Sachs got a sweeter deal from the Fed from anyone else because they have close ties to the board of governors" I believe.

Saying "the Fed destroyed the global economy on purpose, at least twice for private gain" requires a leap from the tenuous argument that the Fed caused both depressions (I'm not sold on the Great Depression, and I vehemently disagree about today's depression), to the Fed intentionally caused both for the economic gain of some small set of people.

1. You can't say that doing nothing is what we got Hoover to do.
2. Hoover provided loan guarantees to the banks just like Obama/Bush
3. Hoover pledged public money towards building projects
4. Hoover made business leaders pledge to keep employment high
5. Hoover created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to lend money and unfreeze the credit markets.
6. Hoover made the depression worse by tinkering with interest rates and taxes.

There is no rule, that says you always boost the monetary supply in recessions. Is there?

Are all economic challenges the same? No!

Why is it so hard to believe the words in this video? Is it so hard to believe that the Fed is operating on policies that benefit the few people who actually own the Fed?

Actually, it's pretty funny to me how he essentially says that the problem was that the Fed contracted the money supply in response to a crash. That's exactly what the Keynesian and Monetarist schools believe.

I also like how at 9:20 or so he says "the biggest gains happened when the National Recovery Act was overturned" well skippy, the National Recovery Act was trying to stop deflation by fixing prices. Not a good idea, definitely a drag on the economy, and not a part of the New Deal liberals want to repeat. He then says the "Agricultural Adjustment Act" (aka a farm subsidy bill) was struck down in 1936, and boom, growth immediately falls off (according to the chart), though his narrative blames that on the institution of the NLRA, which still exists today, and just protects the rights of workers to organize Unions.

What really cause the fall off was that Roosevelt was persuaded to believe that the depression was over, and it was time to cut spending, raise taxes, and balance the budget. Doing so immediately sent the economy crashing down again.

He also uses some voodoo to leave you thinking that because Obama thinks fiscal stimulus will help (and it did, even this video states that the economy recovered when the giant government stimulus of WWII began), he will somehow order the Fed to contract the money supply too. One, he can't, and two, we learned our lesson -- you need to expand the money supply in downturns, otherwise it chokes off the recovery. Bernanke is expanding the money supply.

He also defiantly ends with "it was not the free market and the gold standard that caused the problem", he's half right. With regard to the Great Depression, they were contracting money supply to get back onto the gold standard, and refusing to bail out the banks, which made a recession into a depression (not the free market). This economic problem was caused by the free market, and but Austrians cry out for a return to the gold standard, and that we let the banks fail.

We did it the classical/Austrian way in the 1930's, and it caused the Great Depression. Now you want us to do the same things you wanted (and got) Hoover to do, and got Roosevelt to do in 1937. Forget it.

>> ^quantumushroom:
1) USA is not a democracy.


Correct. It is a constitutional republic.


2) Torture is illegal against American citizens and uniform-wearing soldiers of other nations' armed forces.


Wrong. The Bill of Rights does not differentiate between citizens and non-citizens. It only speaks of 'persons'. It embodies certain essential rights common to all men (and women) regardless of race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, or nationality. True, it only pertains to actions taken within US borders, and against US citizens outside of the US. However, as signatories to the UN Convention against Torture, we have agreed that agents of the US shall not torture.


3) Terrorists fit neither description of #2, therefore legal protections do not apply no matter how badly the ACLU wants them to. The same legal charade was attempted by leftists during WW2, scrambling to give German saboteurs the protection of the American legal process. It failed and the Germs were rightly executed (people had way more common sense + balls back then).



Funny story about them saboteurs--you must be talking about Operation Pastoreus, which gives us the rich legacy of secret military tribunals. The thing is that we would have known NOTHING about the plan, if not for the fact that its leader, intent on betraying the Nazis from the start, turned himself in to the FBI and told them everything they needed to know (he actually had to travel from NYC to Washington, DC to do this, as the FBI Office in NYC hung up on him, thinking him a crank). For this essential service, the leader who had turned on his own people and spared countless American lives was thrown in a cell with the other seven, and sentenced to die. Hoover, director of the FBI, felt that the stroke of luck that had benefitted them in this case didn't play as well in the media as a tireless army of FBI agents, knocking down doors. The leader had been tried separately, and the military judges had been informed about his vital role in breaking the case, and STILL he was sentenced to die. It was only after the details of the case were released that his sentence was commuted. Instead of being treated as a hero, he and another German 'spy' who had turned on their Nazi masters were deported back to Germany, where they were treated as traitors.

So, you know, try another one.


4) While rich in history, most of the rest of the world is quite lame...unstable, squalid, rife with tribal hatreds going back centuries. Other governments' depths of corruption make the USA's look like a school play about tooth decay. Europe is graying and its traditions and culture dying. It would be better off mummified than Muslimfied.


"To save the village, we had to destroy the village." How well did that mentality work in Vietnam?


5) Obama is a laughingstock to America's sworn enemies and is played like a harp by all manner of sociopathic dictators around the globe. He's made America seem as weak as a legless kitten.


Yawn.



6) The USA will never get proper credit or respect for the good it does in the world (at least, not from American liberals). Part of being The Big Dog is being challenged. When China eventually takes over as Big Dog, the rest of the world will long for the good old days.


You know, this is what's so funny about 'free market' ideologues. Their belief that the free market will right all wrongs seems to falter when the market starts favoring an outcome that's much less favorable to them, whether it be the speaking of Spanish, or the growth of non-Christian faiths, or hegemony under a different overlord. Once that happens, the free market must be ignored, and nations toppled.


7) Peanut-head Eric Holder already tried to raise a legal stink about torture and was rebuked. Navy SEALS are waterboarded as part of their training and only 3 of the terrorists were waterboarded, for the purpose of gaining intel, not torture for torture's sake.


Democracies AND constitutional republics do not believe that torture is permissible, regardless of outcome. The ends do NOT justify the means.



Since torture "doesn't work" the logical alternative is to kill all terrorists/insurgents on the battlefield without mercy. Yet this approach is also poo-pooed.


How is this logical? I know--I shouldn't feed the troll here, but I've got some time on my hands.


9) Liberal logic eats its own tail. Dependent on moral relativism to exist, it cannot by its own definition ever claim a lasting moral high ground.


Capitalism eats its own tail. It begets inequities that yield monopolies, and once we have monopolies, capitalism collapses. Communism eats its own tail. In fact, every ideological concept, when taken to its purest form, contains the seeds of its own destruction. The thing about liberalism is that, unlike conservativism, it is endlessly questioning its own relevance and truthfulness. You would, of course, see this as weakness, but like steel, tempering drives out impurities and leads to a stronger material.

I heard the recording of a telephone conversation between Johnson and Hoover after the assassination, and I swear it sounded to me like they were confirming a cover-up.

>> ^westy:
But yah if you use something regularly and its important to your life you should a basic understanding of its operation , I know how to fix my gass cooker , my hoover , basic plumbing . you would have to be a fairly boring and slow person to not have good general knowledge about things you depend on daily.


Now if only you could figure out how to use a keyboard...

I ohnistly don't think knowing about ram is that complicated and its actually extremely hard to brake a pc , I would argue its much harder to know about and replace a car tire sucsesfully than it is to replace and know about ram in a pc.

i wasn't really talking about specifcly mending things its more to do with people not using comon sence interms of puting private information on things and not reolising it at all.

like i say you would not leave bank statements out and about on desk if you just employed a cleaner that you know nothing about and is not from a reputable company.


But yah if you use something regularly and its important to your life you should a basic understanding of its operation , I know how to fix my gass cooker , my hoover , basic plumbing . you would have to be a fairly boring and slow person to not have good general knowledge about things you depend on daily.

Ha! We certainly don't see you around here enough..

In reply to this comment by handmethekeysyou:
This is so much easier than getting a wrench, unscrewing two joints, and simply emptying the pipe's contents into a bucket!

Now all I have to do is hop in the car, drive to a hardware store, buy a wet/dry shop vac, come back home, steal someone's pantyhose (I hate that word and I hate their existence, for the record), and voila! So easy! Thanks handyman douchebag.

"In this case it's a wet/dry shop vac, but any vacuum cleaner, I would imagine, will do."

No it won't. Do not do that. There's a reason "wet/dry" is part of the name. If you drop your wedding ring down the drain and whip out your Hoover, you're going to be in for a very sad time.

This is so much easier than getting a wrench, unscrewing two joints, and simply emptying the pipe's contents into a bucket!

Now all I have to do is hop in the car, drive to a hardware store, buy a wet/dry shop vac, come back home, steal someone's pantyhose (I hate that word and I hate their existence, for the record), and voila! So easy! Thanks handyman douchebag.

"In this case it's a wet/dry shop vac, but any vacuum cleaner, I would imagine, will do."

No it won't. Do not do that. There's a reason "wet/dry" is part of the name. If you drop your wedding ring down the drain and whip out your Hoover, you're going to be in for a very sad time.

Socialism is terrible outside of bare-bones essential services.

And im not in the US

Capitalism is the best we got for society, but it needs regulation to ensure corrpution and excessive greed dont self-destruct the entire shebang, ala. the current situation.

Had Clinton not revoked the regulations put in place by hoover, had Phil Gram and all his republicronies not pushed for further deregulation, and bush not pushed foward the housing bill basically forcing banks to give shitty loans, none of this would of happened.

The gap was actually shrinking post hoover pre-clinton. The wealth was being spread out in a capitalist society, whoda figured.

Unfettered capitalism is just as bad as tightly wound, wide-scope socialism. Capitalism needs regulations to keep it going.
Socialism puts you into the same boat as China, North Korea, Russia....etc.
Economically the nations (except NK) seem to be doing not so bad, but the standard of living is shithouse.

"Barack Obama seems determined to repeat every disastrous mistake of the 1930s, at home and abroad. He has already repeated Herbert Hoover's policy of raising taxes on high income earners, FDR's policy of trying to micro-manage the economy and Neville Chamberlain's policy of seeking dialogues with hostile nations while downplaying the dangers they represent."

SOMETIMES THE TRUTH HURTS. HA HA HA HA HA.

Barack Obama seems determined to repeat every disastrous mistake of the 1930s, at home and abroad. He has already repeated Herbert Hoover's policy of raising taxes on high income earners, FDR's policy of trying to micro-manage the economy and Neville Chamberlain's policy of seeking dialogues with hostile nations while downplaying the dangers they represent. --T.S.