I am amused at the comments that FDR did nothing to cure thos nation’s ills, in fact, some claim, he and his policies prolonged the issues. Yeah!

Like Cooledge and Hoover were hot on the trail. My home in the deep South was in a prolonged depression that lasted from The War until the start of WW11. Life was improving in the South after WW11, but I worked from the time I was in the 6th grade (for $2/day, cfrying hamburgers, sausages, and serving beer) until I finished HS while working a Amoco station.

The Republicans have never done anything positive for the South. Yet, people in north FL vote Rep as easily as they eat fish & grits.

FDR programs did not damage this nation; the extension by Dems and Reps damaged the nation. There was never an FDR program to pay Black Women to have babies. Yet, ADC does exactly that. HUD enslaves Black Families (if you can call a fatherless family or a family with 4 or more fathers a real family) for generations by providing project housing.

Walt, God Bless You!

Thank you so much for sharing. May God bless and keep you and your family.

When I was a little kid, my grandmother used to scold people for spending too much money with the question: “Who do you think we are, the Rockefellers ?” I never understood why until this year. During the Great Depression, a few families like the Rockefellers (who owned the Standard Oil Trust, the national oil industry monopoly, and a variety of other businesses) had all of the money, and everybody else had no money, including my family. The rich would neither spend nor lend, and the poor could not afford to spend or borrow. So, the economy bumped along on life support until Roosevelt’s government jobs programs got going, helping people to earn (not borrow) money that they could then spend without going even deeper into debt.

The origins of the current problems are scarily similar to the depressions of the past: Depression of 1837, Long Depression of 1873-1896, and the Great Depression. People took on way too much debt, then the credit was suddenly pulled. There are great articles on Wikipedia about these. I’m afraid that we’ll be in there someday as the ‘Bush Depression’, or something like that, and there’s not much we can do about it now.

Aside from the government role in curing the problem (in all three previous depressions, it also took 5+ years to run its course through the economy), we need more people like the Stoibers to work, spend, and save responsibly for the future.

Merry Christmas, Walter !

Posted By Robert, Philadelphia PA : November 26, 2008 2:24 pm

Excellent post. I agree with you!

Sorry Sai, the media did not mean to spoil your Christmas (call it what it is) and bring you back to economic reality. Frugality is the new reality and they are just reporting the economic facts. Instead people like you want to put your head into a hole in the ground and pretend this secular change is not happening so you can enjoy opening all your materialist presents this Christmas. We need to stop over consuming and spending and start saving to get this economy back to a savings economy and not a spending economy. Remember to get through this hard time we have to go through it and that will be tough times for most and the media is just preparing you for what is about to happen…..so wake up!

What has me concerned is that there is a high probability that we will get there. It might not be this particular downturn, but a future one.

The government wants to bail us (or companies) out by throwing more money at the problem. They want banks to extend more credit to consumers. This will just lead us to go further into debt.

We, as individuals and as a country, are going to quickly approach the point where we will be working for the sole purpose of paying off the interest on our debts and not the principal itself.

And I can only imagine what is going to happen if other countries pull themselves out of this hole before we do.

What has me concerned is that there is a high probability that we will get there. It might not be this particular downturn, but a future one.

The government wants to bail us (or companies) out by throwing more money at the problem. They want banks to extend more credit to consumers. This will just lead us to go further into debt.

We, as individuals and as a country, are going to quickly approach the point where we will be working for the sole purpose of paying off the interest on our debts and not the principal itself.

And I can only imagine what is going to happen if other countries pull themselves out of this hole before we do.