Wall Street, the Great Depression, Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Unintended Consequences of Presidential Action

2-10 Good article and I think accurate. One big problem is that schools avoided teaching about the depression (called it a problem) I lived on an Illinois farm and we were really hurting though dad a good farmer. We didn't know that the government knew less that we did and still the samo. Leaders want credit for solving so anything goes--or really don't go. FDR did extend the depression as not Obama is apt to do. He is just a kid with bad ideas that he tries to make sound good.

James C. Langford of WA 3:23PM February 10, 2009

To those readers cleaver enough to be paying close enough attention for this article,it's information, and this comment to reach your eye: here is my strong suggestion:

Please read the book called: "The Shadows of Power....the Council of Foreign Relations and the American Decline" by James Perloff.

This is where you will get a very big education and indoctunation into the "insiders" who really are running this country and where and how they are determined to get what they want. One World Order.

We, the citizens of These United States need to wake up!!!

Get the book, read the book, keep the book, refer to the book for facts, or to check the roster of CFR members so that you can better understand where people like,the author, Shlaes is coming from, it will clear up alot of the chatter.

Also you will discover there really is no "change" in the Obama cabnet~~~just alot of the old "establishment insiders". Check it out for yourself.

Hope you were not duped. I know I wasn't!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ann-Marie of ME 7:45PM December 30, 2008

PRESIDENT TRUMAN's SPEECH of 1948, sums up the Great Depression and its aftermath quite nicely---

"....You have a choice between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Within the memory of most of us here, a clear record has been written that shows how much difference that choice can make. The Republicans wrote part of their record from 1921 to 1933. They led the country to depression, poverty, and despair. It is easy to forget what the black days of the depression were like. Let us recall a few, just a few of the bitter facts.

In 1932, after 12 years of Republican bungling, more than 12 million men and women were unemployed. In 1932 the average worker in manufacturing industries was making 45 cents an hour - if he was lucky enough to have a job.... The working men and women in this country could not do much to help themselves, because the strength of their unions had been broken by the reactionary labor policies of the Republican administration.

The Republican bubble burst in 1929, and when it burst: There was no minimum wage to cushion the blow. There was no unemployment compensation to carry the working man's family along. There was no work relief program to help people through the crisis. But the party of privilege was ready to carry big business through the crisis. It created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation for that purpose. The banks, the railways, the insurance companies - they got relief, but not the American people. For the unemployed, it was Hoovervilles and soup kitchens. Veterans were encouraged to go into business for themselves - selling apples. That is the Republican record.

[T]he Democratic Party began to build prosperity for business, labor, and agriculture. We wrote into law the right of the working men and women to organize in unions of their own choice, and to bargain collectively. We put a floor under wages. We outlawed child labor. We created a great insurance system to protect working men and women against the hazards of unemployment and old age. We wrote into law a system of price supports for farm products, so that the bottom would not drop from under the farmer's income the way it did in the 1920's. We put a curb on Wall Street speculation, and stopped the money changers from gambling with people's savings.

With these reforms and many others, the Democratic Party brought the country to the greatest period of prosperity ever known in the history of the world.... And business hasn't suffered too much under the New Deal! Corporations had a loss of $4 billion in 1932. But in 1947 they had a profit of $17 billion, after taxes. These same corporations - these same corporations now claim the Democrats are hostile to business. If I were in their shoes, I would want some more of that kind of hostility...."

STEVE PIETZAK of PA 5:35AM October 31, 2008

Putting Roosevelt and Hoover in the same boat is very bad history, as usual the republicans do not want too many controls over "Free Enterprise" so that the big corporations can do more or less anything they want to do regardless of its social implications....generally speaking the conservatives usually consider property rights as more important than human rights which are the backbone of our democratic society... Roosevelt was our national hero who did what had to be done with the help of a great deal of brilliant individuals with similar goals and ideals collectivly called the "NEW DEAL".....But it took the second world war to really unlease the tremendous power of our industrial complex to raise our standard of living....

Steve Roisman of CA 5:03PM October 06, 2008