YOUR COMMENTS

Mike Lane of Manch,

Nice job at revisionist history Mike. Didn't you learn anything in the Stossel thread?

Lets go to FDR's Treasury Secretary for his evaluation of FDR's policies and the New Deal in 1939 to the US House Ways and Means Committee.

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before, and it does not work... I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started -- and an enormous debt to boot."

FDR inherited a Recession from Hoover and in continuing and greatly expanding upon Hoovers Big Gov Spending Programs took a Recession and turned it into a Depression.
- JP, Warner

If Mr. Lane thinks government is the answer...how does he like government schools? Think they're getting better with more and more government tinkering/intrusion, over the decades? If so, he ought to change his name to Rip Van Winkle!
- Sandee Enriquez, San Diego, CA

It's sad to see so many otherwise well meaning commenters who have no more knowledge than what they learned in their 8th grade "Social Studies" book about the Great Depression and FDR.

It reminds me of Apu in that Simpson's episode when he's trying to become a US citizen and he's asked about the cause of the Civil War. He begins by starting to give a well thought out, intellectual answer, encapsulating the many complicated issues of the time and he is interrupted by the government proctor who cuts him off and says, "Wait, wait... just say slavery." "Slavery it is, sir." says Apu.

Do you really believe that it's as simple as "FDR ended the Depression"? Do you really believe that unemployment can be dealt with by the government hiring half of the unemployed to dig holes and then employing the other half to fill them back in? Read some Bastiat or Hazlitt if only for your children's sake.
- Harry Rose, Williamsport PA

Mr Lane, your desperation to find a way of defending FDR and the New Deal while criticizing Hoover and the Republican Policies has left you in a quandry.

You are entirely missing the point of a great many posts that you seek to critiize.

The fact of the matter is that FDR and Hoover were two sides of the same coin. Each of which had at their core very similar approaches to "Solving" the Economic Issues of their time.

In each case Hoover and FDR both attempted solutions that increasingly meddled with the Economy, Interest Rates, Money Supply and others.

In each case their meddling made things WORSE not Better.

This is not so called revisionist history.

The fact remains that FDR inherited a Recession from Hoover and through mismanagement, increased taxation, interest rate manipulation and other Big Gov approaches turned a Recession into the Depression.

Big Government Meddling has been PROVEN to be the problem and Cutting Taxes has been PROVEN to be the solution to turning a recession around.

The issue is that cutting taxes doesn't allow Big Gov to pursue their agenda and they are afraid that Citizens will get used to keeping more of their hard earned money and resist attempts to raise tax rates again in the future.

Government needs to stick to the few jobs/powers it was granted and perform the few functions it does well. Otherwise it needs to get out of the way and stop causing economic and other issues that each of us and our children/grandchildren will ultimately pay the price for.
- JP, Warner

Go ahead. Believe in the notion that wealth can be created from a printing press. Believe in the notion that one can spend one's way to wealth. Those who put their trust in government always get what they deserve.....good and hard.
- Don, Houston,TX

Michael Carl, you appear to be trying to cloud the issue. The only debate about whether or not FDR's polices shortened or lengthened the Great Depression is among right wing revisionists who are desperate to roll back the New Deal. Nothing in your last post refutes my assertion that unemployment dropped drastically during FDR's first term. The fact is that you stated unemployment rose after "Roosevelt tinkered with the economy." The U.S. unemployment rate hit 25% in August of 1932. Roosevelt was not inaugurated until March 1933. By 1937 the unemployment rate was 14.3% . That is a historical FACT. You should desist from acting as though you have refuted that fact and claiming a false victory. Moynihan was right.

Hoist meet petard.
- Mike Lane, Manchester

Great Article by John Stossel!!!

If only so more reporters actually reported the truth and understood things as John does. This country would be better off.
- Mark, Punta Gorda, FL

Mr. Lane is the one who errs.

Thomas Sowell wrote a piece a few days back in which he reviews a detailed, systematic study of unemployment trends from 1929 through 1941.

Here's the quote:

"Let's start at square one, with the stock market crash in October 1929. Was this what led to massive unemployment?"

"Official government statistics suggest otherwise. So do new statistics on unemployment by two current scholars, Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway, in their book "Out of Work."

"The Vedder and Gallaway statistics allow us to follow unemployment month by month. They put the unemployment rate at 5 percent in November 1929, a month after the stock market crash. It hit 9 percent in December-- but then began a generally downward trend, subsiding to 6.3 percent in June 1930."

"That was when the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were passed, against the advice of economists across the country, who warned of dire consequences."

"Five months after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, the unemployment rate hit double digits for the first time in the 1930s."

"This was more than a year after the stock market crash. Moreover, the unemployment rate rose to even higher levels under both Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt, both of whom intervened in the economy on an unprecedented scale."

As Senator Daniel Moynihan wisely said, "You're entitled to your own opinion. You're not entitled to your own facts."
- Michael Carl, Lynn, MA

Mike Lane of Manch, you miss the point of my post entirely.

First, Congress controls the purse strings not George Bush

Second, both parties are about Big Gov....there's nothing Conservative about the GOP.....in recent years the GOP acts like the Democrats and the Democrats are acting like Socialists.

We have not seen Conservative Government in almost 100 years.

Since the creation of the Fed we've seen ever increasing Big Gov meddling.

Congress needs to return to doing the job that was outlined in Article 1 Section 8 of the US Constitution...while you're at please review the Tenth Amendment and the NH Constitution....in particular Article 7.

The Federal Government needs to stick to the limited functions that it was authorized to perform (Defense, Inter State Commerce etc).

You need to take a look at the historical record.....the more Gov meddles the more problems we experience. Gov MUST get out of the way and let consumers and their hard earned wages determine what businesses fold/survive/thrive.
- JP, Warner

JP from Warner, your comment is a prime example of why Conservatives should not be put in charge of our government. A Party that believes government is the problem will vehemently set out to prove it once elected. Bush is only the latest example. He has emptied the treasury while cutting taxes for the wealthy and feeding the military industrial complex.

Michael Carl from Lynn you CLEARLY don't know what you are talking about. Unemployment fell dramatically in Roosevelt's first term, from 25% when he took office to 14.3% in 1937. There are good reasons why FDR is almost universally considered to be one of the top 2-3 presidents in this nations history, no matter what the revisionists say.

Rank and file, middle income conservatives are largely the product of a concerted disinformation campaign by the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity, and O'Reilly et al, who deliberately distort and revise history. Sadly, they have been successful. Which has led us to the brink of another Great Depression. The wealthy have been desperate to roll back the New Deal ever since it was instituted, and rely on useful idiots who consistently vote against their pocketbooks.
- Mike Lane, Manchester

Bravo Mr. Stossel! Right on the money - too few of those in a position to do so are willing to tell the American people the truth.

Bravo!
- Tom, Campton

Two of the comments indicate that Americans are still largely ignorant of their own history.

A study of unemployment figures from the time period shows that unemployment worsened after both Hoover and Roosevelt tinkered with the economy. So a recession that might have lasted for several months was lengthened into a decade-long depression.

One might think that the quote from Roosevelt's second inaugural address would provide a clue as to Roosevelt's intentions. He was about the task of changing the fundamental economic structure, not in relieving the people's distress. If he was about recovery, he would have left the economy alone.
- Michael Carl, Lynn, MA

FDR inherited a recession and in expanding the bad policies of of Hoover turned that Recession into a Depression that lasted until Eisenhower cut taxes which resulted in the economic boom of the 1950's

If Obama follows the FDR/Big Government ideology and tries to TELL the economy and consumers what businesses and industries will survive/thrive we are doomed to many years of Recession or worse.

The solution to this problem is for Government to CUT taxes on ALL people and allow Consumers to determine with their money which businesses and industries will thrive/survive or fail.

Government is not the solution to our economic hurdles its the PROBLEM and in many regards the CAUSE of the problems.

Remember that the Fannie/Freddie problem was CAUSED by Government in the first place.
- JP, Warner

John Stossel calling anyone arrogant is classic "pot, meet kettle" stuff. His claim that the New Deal didn't do anything to help us work ourselves out of the Great Depression (which was much worse than anything anyone is realistically envisioning now), is nothing more than comically narrow-minded radical conservative foolishness. Would he have preferred Hoover's 'do nothing' approach? How long does he think the country could have handled the 35% unemployment? How long does he think the millions of unemployed young people would have waited for the jobs that were produced? Of course it was a huge government program. John (and many others here), these are not always a bad thing.
- Frank, Plaistow

What a complete waste of space this article has been. Stossel's an idiot.
- Frank Smith, Manchester

If the federal government is serious about growing the economy and creating jobs, it should stop taxing interest from savings accounts, dividends, capital gains, and estates. People and businesses will have more money to spend. Businesses will have an easier time obtaining loans and investments for hiring people, research and development, and plant and equipment. Middle class people and union members who have mutual funds would benefit from capital gains and dividends not being taxed. People would have an easier time saving for college tuitions and retirements.

The national debt is now more than 10 trillion dollars. If the national debt keeps soaring, expect high inflation which harms savers and people on fixed incomes.

The federal government should sell a lot of the land it owns to raise capital, reduce the national debt, and do other things. Some of the money the federal government obtains from the sale of its land should go to state governments. If you type federal government owned land on a search engine, you might be surprised at how much land the federal government owns.

Congress should consider backing our currency with gold, silver, and other commodities.

Congress should eliminate the Federal Rerserve or veto many of its decisions.

Businesses create the jobs.

Governments often increase unemployment by being stupid. Congress should have required down payments on homes and fixed rate mortgages. Expect future increases in the minimum wage to increase unemployment for teenagers and many others. If the minimum wage increases, many people will be fired, many people will work fewer hours, many salaried workers will work more hours for the same pay, and prices are likely to increase.

Can governments make it easier for businesses to create jobs? Yes

Can infrastructure projects lead to long term job creation and economic growth? Yes.

I graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 1992 with a BA Degree in Political Science and a minor in Economics.

I ran for United States Senate in 2002.

I discuss taxation and many other issues on my myspace.com website which you may find by typing stremsky on a search engine.
- Ken Stremsky, Manchester, NH

Mike R., Bedford

Is your pointless insult meant to enlighten us? Mark Govoni offers you facts, you respond by saying Massachusetts is "ruined." I'll tell you what, if the economy of Mass was not so strong NH would go down the drain real fast, an awful lot of our people earn their money in Mass, like it or not.

You impress as someone who hollers at his tv and thinks he's accomplishing something.
- Tom Labrie, Rochester

Sure John, you go on playing your out of tune violin to the tone deaf koolaid addicts. It makes you a payday, that's all you care about anyway. Exactly what income group is Stossel? Top 3%? Top 2%?

Stossel would be perfectly happy with another term of Bush-led national disaster, pumping more cash upstream to the already rich and scattering the crumbs that fall off the truck to the middle class. That's what he considers fair.

What about utter failure do these neocon fools not understand?
- Tony, Manchester

Mark Govoni, please keep your socialist tripe in Mass. You've already ruined your own state with it.
- Mike R., Bedford

FURTHER NOTES ON THIS PHONY ECONOMIC INTELLECTUAL!
EDUCATION:Princeton University with a BA in Psychology in 1969 and was a member of Princeton Tower Club while there(TOWER CLUB IS WHERE THE RICH KIDS GET TO EAT!)
POST GRADUATE DEGREE:He received an Honoris Causa Doctorate from Francisco Marroquin University, a libertarian university in Guatemala, in 2008.( Now that'll show those liberal economists!)

Galbraith and Stossel
Liberal economist James K. Galbraith said that Stossel, in a story on laissez-faire economics in September 1999, used an out of context clip of Galbraith to make it seem that Galbraith had said nearly the opposite of what he meant. Stossel denied that Galbraith's views had been misrepresented but changed the words with which he introduced the Galbraith clip in rebroadcasts of the program.[26][27][28](FROM WIKIPEDIA)
- Mark Govoni, Halifax, MA

Amazing. Stossell is right, but those who believe, despite all the evidence to the contrarey and with little or no evidence to support them, that Big government is good, bash him, most by name calling rather than with facts, which is fine since it is facts they lack. . It is not revisionist to tell the truth about FDR lenghtening and even deepening the depression. Good intentions, which I think FDR had, do not make everything okay. ( consider Iraq for a more recent example of good intentions gone bad). Laissez-faire economies, which we have not have for a couple of generations at least, do work, although the results are seldom pretty. Mike and Tom, you both need to do something other than study the FDR supporters talking points. Stossell has made a career out of pointing out which emperor has no clothes, and although not always right, he is this time.
- jeff, Goffstown

Well, there you go again Tom! In typical knee jerk liberal rhetoric you attack Stossel & his column yet provide not a shred of evidence to back up your outrageous claims. Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that your hand is already outstretched in anticipation of receiving Obama dollars?
- Thomas Thorpe, Portsmouth, NH

To Tom of Dover and Mike of Manchester you should revisit your history books and realize that the 1930's were the worst economic decade in modern history. Remember what Winston Churchill said "Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it."
Central control of our diverse economy can be totally stagnated for a decade if Obama deploys Rooseveltian economic illogic. We've already seen the start of the big-union paybacks for this group of Democrats getting elected. We should all read the great socialist Orwell as he wrote of the evils of Central Controlling Government.
- jerry lacorte, derry

"laissez-faire economics"?

In the words of Inigo Montoya, "I do not think that means what you think it means.” Or did you simply fail to notice the plethora of local, state, federal, and international codes, rules, regulations, laws, treaties, and regulatory agencies?
- Carl Bussjaeger, Lyndeborough

John Stossel becomes more irrelevant by the minute. His circular logic and revisionist history are borne on the wings of ignorance. Arrogance John? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
- Tom, Dover-Foxcroft, Me.

John Stossel is right.I want you all to picture a trilion dollars of Big Dig projects.God help us all.
- Walt Milano, Chichester

Hey, I have an idea, let's take the advice of all the wingnuts and various other elements of the lunatic fringe (like John Stossel) that have brought us to the precipice of an economic disaster that threatens to rival the Great Depression. After all Mr. Stossel made it this far without getting a single hair on his head messed up.

Newsflash: laissez-faire economics does not work. It's what got us into this mess, and the Great Depression. The latest lie that the Right Wing is desperately trying to foster is that FDR exacerbated the Great Depression instead of ameliorating it. George Orwell could have learned a thing or two from this band of liars, cheats, and robber barons.

After eight years of Bush's foolish and expensive foreign policy and tax cuts for the rich we now mustn't spend a penny to alleviate the crisis that the Republican party has foisted upon us. Pray tell, why we should listen to the party and people that has been dead wrong on every major issue of the last 8 years?
- Mike Lane, Manchester

God Bless you John!
- Stephen Schochet, Los Angeles