Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Roosevelt and Kennedy were the last great presidents, the ones after were all crooks.
Great presidents or popular presidents that started bigger problems? They looked great at the time of their presidency as well as Clinton but the results of their presidency caused major problems later on.
The Depression started long before Roosevelt. By 1933 the country was in desperate shape. My parents lived thru those times, lots of tough stories in my family history. Far worse than you can ever imagine.
I think FDR meant well, at least compared to the welfare state Democrats of today, but his policies were a disaster.
Nope. He was willing to try anything. With good reason - segments of the country were in almost open revolt. Its easy to look back now, point fingers, etc. But good or bad, something had to be done.
My father graduated from Auburn Univ in engineering in 1936. There were no jobs anywhere then. None. It took him a couple of years to get in the Army; and that was pure luck.
To understand a president's economic policies you gotta know his economic advisors and those influential economists at the time. First Marriner Eccles his Fed res chmn who designed the Emergency BankingAct and british economist Joh M Keynes.
"Keynes stated that if Investment exceeds Saving, there will be inflation. If Saving exceeds Investment there will be recession. One implication of this is that, in the midst of an economic depression, the correct course of action should be to encourage spending and discourage saving. This runs contrary to the prevailing wisdom, which says that thrift is required in hard times. In Keynes’s words, “For the engine which drives Enterprise is not Thrift, but Profit.”
Keynes took issue with Say’s Law – one of the economic “givens” of his era. Say’s Law states that supply creates demand. Keynes believed the opposite to be true – output is determined by demand.
Keynes argued that full employment could not always be reached by making wages sufficiently low. Economies are made up of aggregate quantities of output resulting from aggregate streams of expenditure – unemployment is caused if people don’t spend enough money.
In recessions the aggregate demand of economies falls. In other words, businesses and people tighten their belts and spend less money. Lower spending results in demand falling further and a vicious circle ensues of job losses and further falls in spending. Keynes’s solution to the problem was that governments should borrow money and boost demand by pushing the money into the economy. Once the economy recovered, and was expanding again, governments should pay back the loans.
Economically and socially successful economies have significant contributions from both the government and the private sectors.
Keynes’s view that governments should play a major role in economic management marked a break with the laissez-faire economics of Adam Smith, which held that economies function best when markets are left free of state intervention."
Its kinda like when Americans want to credit Reagan for the fall of communism in Russia when, in reality, it was his economic advisors who encouraged raising the prime lending rate allowing the US govt to borrow and outspend the Russians which eventually bankrupt their economic system. They just couldnt keep up with us monetarily or technologically. So who should get the real credit? Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan!
He will be ranked among the greatest president after the political rancor has turned cold and coagulated.
Not a chance. He was terrible, and he was responsible in large part for the depression. Facts are stubborn things.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
