More great depression bogosity

[Lord T Hawkeye]

A post from someone who didn't seem to like Shane's vid on the great depression.  Always a fun topic!

Yes, monetary policy is a huge factor in the economy. (Well, duh), but the implication that hands off would solve all economic problems is BS.

If you measure the depression by GDP, Roosevelt's techniques DID start to turn things around, however slowly..

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Shane's vid already address this in that part about "it's easy to grow when you're at rock bottom"?

There is genuine debate on what caused the depression and how we got out.

If you read the imperfect wikipedia article, you will see a lot of debate on the topic and it's not 100% agreed on. shanedk is showing his point of view on the topic, not a true history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression

Here is another list of the causes...
http://americanhistory.about.com/od/...depression.htm


Another thing Cons and Libertarians seem to not care about: Familes and kids starving and dying isn't the same as hitchhiking or having to walk to work, while your car is in the shop. Best do anything you can to try to save people. I've read that it's estimated a combined total of close to 12 million Americans died from starvation in Depression. A lot more would have died if nothing was done.

Yeah, the car was in the shop:

He goes on the show a bunch of great depression pictures, looks suspiciously like a cheap shot to tug at heart strings.

I did call him out on a pet peeve of mine here.  Nit picking analogies doesn't make you look smart!  It makes you look like you don't know what an analogy is!  ><

Another point is the claim that the unemployment rate after the crash was mild. Perhaps it was only mild because it was just the beginning?



And morphing Obama to Hoover and Bush is frankly idiotic, especially since it's the unregulated free marked that got us to our current "Great Recession." Conservative policy got us here. So, it's VERY misleading to say this is a history lesson, when it's clear the creator of the video has a very specific agenda and has twisted a few but not all of the facts.

Oh gahd, the same old "unregulated market caused all our woes" nonsense.  It'll be the same story.  I'll demand proof and they'll ramble on for pages about some unrelated flim flam and hope I drop it.  Ugh...any know a good way to shut down this one?  Requests for evidence always get glossed over.

I notice shanedk's GNP chart is a little off from the official one. How convenient.

Here's another one, showing that Shanedk's chart exaggerate's the 1937 recession.


However, the 1937 recession within a depression was partly caused by FDR's trying to balance the budget after his increased spending previously.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com...s-of-1937.aspx


Meanwhile, so far, Hoverbushbama as this tool would like to think of him, seems to have averted another great depression, perhaps by using the tools shandedk hates.

*singing* He's Barack Obama!  He's come to save the day!

[MrBogosity]

Current US unemployment rate: 9.5%. We're also seeing a contraction in overall nominal spending and investment despite more money being created. How has Obama averted another Great Depression? Seems to me we're still at depression-era levels!

[Travis Retriever]

According to Peter Schiff, if you include:
people who were searching for jobs, but gave up; people who were working as Architects making about 100k a year, and are now working at Miccy D's, like the figure used to; the current rate is about 16%