Obama did NOT save the US From a Depression

Hell, they elected FDR four times during the longest period of craptastic economic conditions that existed in the United States.

The Works Progress Administration (renamed during 1939 as the Work Projects Administration; WPA) was the largest New Deal agency, employing millions to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects. It fed children and redistributed food, clothing, and housing. Almost every community in the United States had a park, bridge or school constructed by the agency, which especially benefited rural and Western populations.
…
Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA provided almost eight million jobs.

Yeah, what were they thinking?

Bleeding us dry, and then move on to another victim/country.

A wonderful plan to fleece the American people.

Sounds to me like they have a stupid plan. Maybe they haven’t heard — there is no longer a New World over the horizon that they can sail away to. And when they get cold enough, the fleeced are going to want their fleece back.

Also re: the WPA creating 8 million jobs: note that FDR did that via Executive Order. Now THAT”S political courage.

…food stamp swipe cards have replaced very visible bread lines.

There are still bread lines, but they have taken a modern form. Now they are formed of people who wait outside grocery stores just before midnight at the start of the month. They receive their food-stamp benefits on their cards just after midnight. This has been noted recently by, among others, an executive at one of the large grocery store chains — I think it was Wal-mart.

“Why I have to keep telling people this, as they experience an absolute decline in their goddamn wages, I don’t know.”

Well, if the flood of disinformation we get from the corporate press is a big contributing reason for this, and I think it is, then I find it encouraging that the right wing took a shellacking from hispanics across the west.

I’ve always wondered if back when our immigrant ancestors organized on behalf of labor, it made a difference that they were just beginning to use English and still spoke German, Polish, Russian or what-have-you within their own communities and families.

I’m guessing it is harder to brainwash someone when they don’t speak the language in which the disinformation is delivered. I’ve always wondered if that has a impact on the ability of people to see things clearly and organize effectively.

If it does, I’m pleased that the fascists among my fellow citizens are so dead set against learning Spanish.

Obama saved us from the immediate effects of a Depression, in the sense that if McCain had won and followed GOP dogma, the jobless rate would be some multiple of where it is now, the car industry would be toast, etc. In other words, McCain would’ve delivered all the pain now, instead of meting it out over a decade or more.

It would be interesting if he would’ve capitulated to the banks (likely), or let good ol creative destruction work its wonders in that space, too.

The top two rumored candidates as secretary of treasury for a would-have-been mccain administration were phil gramm and john thain. The bankers would have gotten their way, but it;s hard to imagine they would have gotten their way any more with mcccain than they have with obama.

Apparently, obama is beginning to course correct from his socialist ways:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/04/white-house-to-business-c_n_778780.html

Z

yes, there are bread lines, they’re just well hidden. I think they call them food pantries now, but the one that sets up in my hood every week has the line going down the alley, so you’ll never see it. And the soup kitchens and homeless shelters aren’t exactly going out of business either. We just consider their clientele to be bums.

McCain was a wildcard, you look how he started as a doctrinaire Sunbelt Republican when he went to the Senate in 1986 to replace the retiring Goldwater. Then look where he ended up during the 2000 Republican primary and the first couple of years of the W’s term. There wasn’t a sharper, more popular and, frankly more moderate Republican in the country (W. excepted, Republicans invariably nominate the right guy 8 years too late). On issues, he was solid, hether voting against Bush’s tax cuts or voting in favor of climate change and of course his opposition to torturing prisoners. I just liked the guy.

But if he wanted to be president and he knew that meant sucking up to the right. That awkward (due to war injuries) 2004 hug with W. was the start of a long slide down. Once he secured the ’08 nomination in the spring, he should have moved left on the issues, fired his Rovebot staffers and begged Mike Murphy and John Weaver to come in to run the campaign. If he’d done that, he’d have had a greater chance of winning and of being a decent president. But he was too far gone.

It’s because all those nice people on TV say otherwise. Oh, and the not-so-nice people on radio, too.

A possible alternate reason for why Ian Welsh has to keep telling people this is that the people he is writing/talking to have not yet lost their jobs or homes. Many of the people who have lost their jobs or homes are not writing on the internet.

The government’s economic policies blunted the depression a bit,…

That’s the lie. The policies have extended and deepened the depression. For example, had the large banks been put into receivership, the existing (or new) banks would not have the excess reserves to sit on and would be looking for opportunities to lend. And had a right-to-rent policy/law been put in place, many families would be renting their houses instead of paying a mortgage that was more than the property is worth or homeless. These people don’t think that the depression was blunted.

One of the problems with the current policies is that we don’t get to see the much better policies that could have been been in their place.

You just let them go bankrupt, take them over with the FDIC, reinflate them with the Fed and use them to lend directly while you prepare to break them up

Baker concurs:

Claim 2 implies that the economy would have collapsed absent the TARP. It assumes an absurd counter-factual: that the government and the Fed would have allowed the banks to collapse and then done nothing in response to boost the economy. Of course that would have been a catastrophe, but it is simply a lie to claim that our options were either doing TARP or never doing anything.

There is no reason that we could not have let the banks go down in the cesspool of junk loans that they had fostered and then flooded the system with liquidity after the fact to boost the economy. This is the serious alternative scenario — not the permanent do nothing scenario that TARP proponents have created.

The Cost of the TARP: One More Time

He also critiques two other claims.

@ 233 ºC

First it is “Change election funding” but to do so Law needs be legislated; but the legislature is broken.

Then it is “Elect more better™ legislators” but the political process is corrupted; the political parties are broken.

Then it is control the government but that is run and dominated by the imperial executive; the presidency is broken.

Then the courts will pass judgment but the law has been laid low, cut down by judges with nefarious agendas; the courts are broken.

Then it depends upon the citizen to act but the citizen, bereft of education, possessing no remembrance of history, no knowledge of economics, no concept of civics, no acquaintance with Law, and willfully ignorant of any discipline of substance; that citizen is broken as well.

When all is taken together and summed, the bottom line is that this extent of damage cannot be undone. At the end of the day, the interrelated complex that sustained the Republic is no longer, what remains is a body politic riddled with cancer: a cancer of lies, a cancer of propaganda, a cancer of illusion, a cancer of delusion, a cancer of self-deception, a cancer of hubris.

In the end, power abhors a vacuum, something will replace what once had a vital balance. Those in power will try to remain there and will apply greater and greater force and coercion to do so; but this too will break down as all autarchical despots ultimately do, the expense of force finally undermining the autocrat.

Maybe then, enough of the Philadelphia construct can be recalled and a new edifice built in such a manner that no individual, no group, no corporation will be allowed enough power by themselves or in conspiracy to endanger the new edifice. The life expectancy of a Republic averages about two centuries before the political impulse is spent; this Republic is no exception. Those things that extend the life of Republics were not done and profound corruption prevails.

Sorry, Anon. FDR’s policies worked and had a tangible benefit.

Why “sorry”? That Roosevelt’s policies worked was my point to Mary Queen of Scots.

Formerly T-Bear PERMALINK
November 5, 2010
@ 233 ºC
==================================
Well done! One of the best summations of our current position I’ve ever read.
I especially liked your last paragraph; hopeful but realistic. Maybe we can rediscover our lost republic, but it’s many miles of bad road to get there; so-to-speak. Cheers.

@ Celsius and Ian
Those are kind words, thank you. Please use any comment as you see fit, they are made in the public domain, always hopeful of value.

…they unreasonably counted people employed in the WPA, PWA etc New Deal programs as unemployed.

Haven’t you heard? “Gov’t. can’t create jobs.” reagan said so. It’s tattooed on republicans brains. obama said so — do the math.