jc6565..."...cutting taxes on cronys and rich to lower levels than the poor pay."

Utterly wrong. Who told you this nonsense? HuffPuff? DailyKos?

Allow me to point something out: Remember Enron? Remember the fallout from that debacle? We were all made very aware of the scandal that affected thousands of people's pensions. Shame on them, right?

Fast forward to today... here we have an economic crisis an order of magnitude larger than Enron.

Enron = pebble of sand,
Fannie & Freddie = the beach.

Yet all of the people involved in driving FM&FM into the ground while blocking reform are off scott-free, some may go into Obama's cabinet... and some of them, Barney Frank & Chris Dodd are still running the show.

Intellectually honest Leftists & Democrats should be outraged... a peculiar silence.

Anyone who would use Hyperhistory.com has a screw loose -- if I agree with them. Hyperhistory is filled with errors that make Wikipedia look like a biblical text tossed at your a parting of the clouds and a big booming voice.

It is mostly plagiarized and when you see a piece there that makes sense, it's because someone has finally gotten tired of the argumentative 17-year-old who cobbled it together as a school projected. (I'm not making this up). He may be a little older now, but he has less than zero interest in accuracy, but he loves the mentions people give him. Atrocious.

FarOutFish is correct.

Saying the economy 'did well' in 1936... perhaps when comparing to the previous years, but was by no means a healthy economy.

war or solar? what kind of question is that... I choose Solar War! The Sun is too damn hot, we must thwart it's expansionist power!

flossophy, your statement is itself proof of plc's point.

Stating that there are "intellectuals" on the Reich is a dodge, when you look at the supposedly "intellectual" content of their utterances. As you can witness above, Will trots out nothing more than a "free markets" soundbite, whereas Krugman actually knows what he's talking about.

This reminds me of other Reich violations of common sense, such as -- oh yeah -- you, claiming that soundbites are intellectual utterances!

If the Reich is "more objective," then why aren't their policies more accurate and efficacious? If they have the inside line on policy's "effects on society," then we can only assume that for twenty-plus years they've been ruining the country for a purpose, rather than just not caring about people at all.

Needless to say, this does not endear me to them.

I'd argue that if the last eight years of history is the result of "the Right...more objectively looking at history and the effects of policy" you need to get your head examined.

(sigh...)

You seem the kind who's swayed by appearances -- and/or wish to create appearances that others may be swayed by.

Why else respond to a comment of unrelieved excoriation of Republicans, by saying "you seem quite knowledgable" -- unless that was supercilious faux-flattery?

I read your link (soundbite followed by soundbite, gramatically masquerading as logical arguments), until I ran across the highlighted description of ACORN as a "radical" organization. After seeing that, I knew the rest of a long read would be time utterly wasted. If getting people into homes of their own is "radical," if registering citizens to vote their consciences is "radical," then one need look no further, to know the agenda of those who pose such "arguments."

Those behind such sentiments only see the profits to be made by keeping people disadvantaged and uninformed. To them, making sure citizens can cast informed votes is subversive, because the next step will be that citizens WILL start casting informed votes that bolster their own best interests.

Good-bye cash-cows! The end of the "consumer culture!" Based on buying the goods the rich Corporatists offer us, complete with the least (monetary) costs, bolstered by ignorance of the real full-system costs; goods planned to decay into uselessness and/or obsolescence in time for the next holiday/consuming season.

Give me a policy any day, that supports people and real information, over a tweaked fantasy of endless resources, to consume and throw "away."

Long live ACORN!

Those nations had no money so either they were extended credit or the U.S. paid for it which results in the same - government funded industry initiatives. The bottom line is that FDR was not perfect but he inherited the Depression, he did not create it. He came into office when it was in full swing and all he did was do his very best to help America out of it. And he did! Ideas like the Federal Reserve and his public works projects were good, sound ideas that still contribute TO THIS DAY. Even social security is a great and nobel idea. It is the way future administrations failed to propely budget for growth and infaltion to fund these legacy programs that has caused problems with these programs, not the original idea.

As you economics majors know, results dont happen overnight and sometimes there are many overlapping and conflicting factors that finally result in change over time. I would add that the war effort was on credit and any economic benefits from it would not even be felt till years after war production was started so add that to the fact that we didnt even begin major production for the war effort until 1940 and you can clearly see that "the war dividend" for the Depression is really an illusion. Did it help, of course AFTER the fact. Did it actually end the Depression, absolutely not.

No, the war did not end the Depression it was simply incidental. You are wrong as are others who oversimplify the connection and screw up the chronology. Government funded business initiatives in conjunction with government sponsored public works projects are what lifted us out of the depression and that was already well implemented by 1939 when the Depression was over in America and long before the war. Extensive war mobilization did not occur for another year to 2 years.

I would assert that even if we did not go to war the policies implemented and the track the government was on at the time would have resulted in the nation exiting the Great Depression. There is a lot of proof of that but there is no proof that what happened at the end of 1941 impacted what occured at the start of 1939. That is a fallacy.

To make a statement like "WWII ended the Great Depression" is a ridiculous oversimplification made by people unfamiliar with the actual timeline. A fact based statement would be "The onset of WWII coincided with the end of the Great Depression".

Love it. Your link is as much a defense of the Democrats as an indictment of- someone.

The Republicans in that hearing used as much misdirection as the editor of the video did. Don Manzullo (R-IL), for instance, reading off the supposedly out-of-line salaries and bonuses of Fanny officers.

What, are we supposed to gasp in horror, when we hear that Raines earned a $ 526,000 salary and a 1.1 mil bonus? Sorry, but I seem to remember a total package price of $ 46 million, for the CEO of Halliburton not long ago. So I'm fresh out of shock, at the 1.7 mil level.

This cherry-picked, shifted-context video proves nothing -- certainly not what you'd like it to.

erincnyc:

What message? Do you believe in more government spending or less? And is that a good thing in your opinion?