Conrad Black: FDR and the Depression: A New Round
[Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full. He can be reached at cbletters@gmail.com.]
Before my spirited exchange with my esteemed friend Amity Shlaes about the New Deal reaches the point of diminishing returns, it should be possible to agree on some points that may be applicable to current economic questions.
I think we agree that Obamanomics has not succeeded, beyond a tentative stabilization, easily shaken by lack of public confidence in the regime and the absence of any serious deficit-reduction plan. We seem also to agree that unfocused fiscal profligacy on the scale of the $800 billion stimulus bill has not led to significant reductions in unemployment, that more of the same will not succeed any better, and that the ability of the federal government to keep hurling money out of the airplane on that scale has probably passed anyway.
Where we agree in interpreting the economic experience of the Thirties is that U.S. unemployment on Inauguration Day 1933 was between 25 and 33 percent; that it was between 12 and 16 percent in late 1934, and between 9.8 and 14.2 percent just before the 1940 election; and thatunemployment was effectively eliminated in the U.S. before America’s entry into World War II in December 1941.
Beyond this, we seem to part company, as on that record, I do not see how Amity could write, as she did last week on NRO, that “Roosevelt did fail to end the Depression.” She applies the criterion of “getting back to where we were before.” When Roosevelt died in office in April 1945, after more than 12 years as president, U.S. GDP had more than doubled from 1933, and was half the economic product of the entire war-ravaged world....
Read entire article at National Review
Before my spirited exchange with my esteemed friend Amity Shlaes about the New Deal reaches the point of diminishing returns, it should be possible to agree on some points that may be applicable to current economic questions.
I think we agree that Obamanomics has not succeeded, beyond a tentative stabilization, easily shaken by lack of public confidence in the regime and the absence of any serious deficit-reduction plan. We seem also to agree that unfocused fiscal profligacy on the scale of the $800 billion stimulus bill has not led to significant reductions in unemployment, that more of the same will not succeed any better, and that the ability of the federal government to keep hurling money out of the airplane on that scale has probably passed anyway.
Where we agree in interpreting the economic experience of the Thirties is that U.S. unemployment on Inauguration Day 1933 was between 25 and 33 percent; that it was between 12 and 16 percent in late 1934, and between 9.8 and 14.2 percent just before the 1940 election; and thatunemployment was effectively eliminated in the U.S. before America’s entry into World War II in December 1941.
Beyond this, we seem to part company, as on that record, I do not see how Amity could write, as she did last week on NRO, that “Roosevelt did fail to end the Depression.” She applies the criterion of “getting back to where we were before.” When Roosevelt died in office in April 1945, after more than 12 years as president, U.S. GDP had more than doubled from 1933, and was half the economic product of the entire war-ravaged world....