Whats Caused the Great Depression

[Capitalist Lawyer]

Stock market crash? Think again.

Did the New Deal take us out of the GD? Think again.

Did Capitalism fail and lead to the GD? Think again.

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3476271.html

[Demogorgon]

Can't you do better than that? The idea that the new deal somehow made things worse is a trendy idea amongst neo-Liberals attempting to rationalise their love of unrestrained capitalism with the disaster that it is known to have unleashed.

I didn't have to read very far into that to find examples of it's ridiculous logic. In the first couple of paragraphs it claims the succes of Reaganomics, yet the "success" of that is the same thing which ultimately led to the great depression. Vast amounts of wealth are generated yet it isn't seen by the majority of the population, reducing their spending power (the average American made less ajusting for taxes in 2001 than they did in 1981 despite theincrease in wealth) meaning that eventually demand can not meet supply and recession happens. In America this was solved by vast increases in Government expenditure compensating for this. In that it stopped the depression it worked.

What do you propose, that the federal Reserve should have focused on keeping the supply of money steady and rode out the storm? That has been tried and it doesn't work.

[Nusocialist]

Bah,Keynes proved this kind of crap bs decades ago.

And he was in alignment with much of socialist economic on this point.(of course he was no socialist,sadly.).

[fidel59]

Not sure what all caused it, but I do know it took ww2 to get the capitalist ass out of it. War is good for capitalism...

[bezdomni]

The capitalist economy naturally has crests and troughs - the great depression was just one of the really deep troughs.

The reformists during the depression and the war created social programs to diminish the effects of the troughs.

The cause of the great depression was capitalism - plain and simple.

[Dimentio]

Problem: The abundance of production is causing falling prices.

Analysis: Either the price system or the abundance have to go.

Solution: Subsidize the farmers to burn their crops. F#ck abundance.

[colonelguppy]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2006 02:30 pm
Can't you do better than that? The idea that the new deal somehow made things worse is a trendy idea amongst neo-Liberals attempting to rationalise their love of unrestrained capitalism with the disaster that it is known to have unleashed.

I didn't have to read very far into that to find examples of it's ridiculous logic. In the first couple of paragraphs it claims the succes of Reaganomics, yet the "success" of that is the same thing which ultimately led to the great depression. Vast amounts of wealth are generated yet it isn't seen by the majority of the population, reducing their spending power (the average American made less ajusting for taxes in 2001 than they did in 1981 despite theincrease in wealth) meaning that eventually demand can not meet supply and recession happens. In America this was solved by vast increases in Government expenditure compensating for this. In that it stopped the depression it worked.

What do you propose, that the federal Reserve should have focused on keeping the supply of money steady and rode out the storm? That has been tried and it doesn't work.
17% unemployment by 1937 doesn't really bode well for new deal policies, and that number includes all of FDR's ridiculous pet project jobs that have nothing to do with running a modern economy.

his policies made much harder for industry to rebuild, when really they should have just fixed the feds monetary policies.


Problem: The abundance of production is causing falling prices.

Analysis: Either the price system or the abundance have to go.

Solution: Subsidize the farmers to burn their crops. F#ck abundance.

i never understood why falling prices was a problem at all


Not sure what all caused it, but I do know it took ww2 to get the capitalist ass out of it. War is good for capitalism...

no it isn't, i hate this myth. it is inherently destructive, and the increased demand and consumption and therefore production end with the war, meanwhile while efforts could have been made to spend more recources on a developing a better peacetime economy. in other words, a desirable one.

the only good things that come our of the war for a country's economy is increased innovation, and if any recources are stolen from another country to enhance the victor.

[encephalon]

How ironic it is that you send us a link to a foundation that is named after the father of hoovertowns.

[synthesis]

Originally posted by Capitalist [email protected] 16, 2006 12:00 pm
Stock market crash? Think again.

Did the New Deal take us out of the GD? Think again.

Did Capitalism fail and lead to the GD? Think again.

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3476271.html
Out of curiosity, are there other works which support this theory that do not originate from an organization with a clear agenda behind its releases?

[colonelguppy]

is there anyone without an agenda? how about you just work with what is said rather then just simply dismissing them as biased?

[encephalon]

After having read this, I must say that it is entirely self-contained and prematurely disregards any evidence that points to a contrary argument. Which, in short, means it's entirely ideologically motivated.

Of course, we already knew that; and I really do expect more from you, though I know I shouldn't. Your biggest clue to how overly simplified and ridiculously ideological this article was should have been: "All the Federal Reserve had to do to avoid the Depression and the subversion of the American constitutional order was to purchase $1 billion in government securities during the 10-month period from December 1929 to October 1930."

Give me a break. Are you going to honestly accept that? You attack communists for what you call a simplistic world-view, and then you stand behind something that says this..?

At the very least, you should be wary at how the article automatically blames the depression on the left instead of the actual economic system.

I'd say I will no longer take any articles you post seriously again.. but I decided that a while back. Lack of exposure made me forget the quality of your leisure reading.

[synthesis]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18, 2006 01:38 am
is there anyone without an agenda? how about you just work with what is said rather then just simply dismissing them as biased?
Here's an analogy. People rarely accept Holocaust denial as fact, often not so much on the basis of the arguments themselves but due to the knowledge that the only people who ever further those arguments have a specific political purpose for doing so and will thus manipulate or invent "information" in order to legitimize their beliefs. Therefore, a skeptical mind will be ready to question the trustworthiness of such a writer's conclusions.

This is not an effort to equate capitalists with Nazis, or the Great Depression with the Holocaust, as they are two drastically different events; it is merely an analogy. It is "common knowledge" that the Great Depression was simply one of the lowest lows of the natural capitalist economy's ups and downs, and it is hard to disregard the fact that the only people who argue otherwise have a specific political purpose behind their actions; i.e., to legitimize laissez-faire capitalism. Any rational mind would have to at least consider that notion, but at the same time, it is easy to confuse causes with correlations, especially in the highly subjective field of macroeconomics. I was curious if there are those outside the libertarian/laissez-faire paradigm who concur with those arguments from a perspective that at least attempts to have a scientific approach.

[ShakeZula06]

America's Great Depression (http://www.mises.org/rothbard/agd/contents.asp)

edit: Also good, much shorter: Economic depressions: There cause and cure (http://www.mises.org/tradcycl/econdepr.asp)

[colonelguppy]

Originally posted by DyerMaker+December 18, 2006 05:07 am--> (DyerMaker @ December 18, 2006 05:07 am)
[email protected] 18, 2006 01:38 am
is there anyone without an agenda? how about you just work with what is said rather then just simply dismissing them as biased?
Here's an analogy. People rarely accept Holocaust denial as fact, often not so much on the basis of the arguments themselves but due to the knowledge that the only people who ever further those arguments have a specific political purpose for doing so and will thus manipulate or invent "information" in order to legitimize their beliefs. Therefore, a skeptical mind will be ready to question the trustworthiness of such a writer's conclusions.

This is not an effort to equate capitalists with Nazis, or the Great Depression with the Holocaust, as they are two drastically different events; it is merely an analogy. It is "common knowledge" that the Great Depression was simply one of the lowest lows of the natural capitalist economy's ups and downs, and it is hard to disregard the fact that the only people who argue otherwise have a specific political purpose behind their actions; i.e., to legitimize laissez-faire capitalism. Any rational mind would have to at least consider that notion, but at the same time, it is easy to confuse causes with correlations, especially in the highly subjective field of macroeconomics. I was curious if there are those outside the libertarian/laissez-faire paradigm who concur with those arguments from a perspective that at least attempts to have a scientific approach. [/b]
it is not "commonly accepted", there is much debate about great depression and there is very good reason to believe that it was the governments fault.

[Guerrilla22]

<_< The depression was a world wide phenomena, not just something that happened in the uS, that alone pretty much punches a whole in the theory that the depression happened due to mishaps by the Fed Reserve.

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20, 2006 08:29 am
<_< The depresion was a world wide phenomena, not just something that happened in the uS, that alone pretty much punches a whole in the theory that the depression happened due to mishaps by the Fed Reserve.
True, which brings me to another point I was going to make. In America, thanks tot he New Deal, America weathered the storm much better than other countries. Here in Britain, the government refused to increase spending out of fear of running up a large deficit, and behaved rather like right wing revisionists say the American government should have. Yet the results were devastating.

What saved us in the end, much as it pains me to say it, was the wealth creation of the second world war followed by the Marshall plan.