I give up on America.

Agree with everything else, but this is a real sticking point with me. Obama did not get us out of Iraq. The timeline in which he removed troops was based on an agreement that Bush signed with the Iraqi government. Remember the time some guy threw a shoe at Bush? That's what he was going to be the big announcement. Afterward it was announced, but it turned into the whole "Why can't we be out earlier then 2011?" Actually, Obama waited until the literal last day to pull troops out. Troops were not pulled out by Obama, just during his presidency. Everything else is totally a plus for Obama, but Iraq is not. Also, he didn't close Guantanamo.

According to what I learnt at school, the dude was in favour of laissez faire, but then the Depression happened, and shit hit the fan. After seeing that the economy wasn't fixing alone, he started acting.

I learned that too. I found out later when I was doing research for my junior year research paper (which was about the Great Depression) that he did pass acts and laws that were supposed to help the economy and were very FDR-like.

Though not as powerful so not as effective.

Powerful enough to cause 30% unemployment so if his purpose was to fuck America in the economic anus, then it was VERY effective.

Wrong sir. While Hoover's anti-Depression policies were not strong or numerous enough to effectively combat the economic downturn, they certainly did not cause more economic downturn.

Here's what I don't get. Every single recession prior to the Great Depression lasted 2-4 years, 5 at the most. The recession in the early 20s lasted 2 years. Suddenly the Great Depression is much worse for what reason? The only thing that was different was that this time, the government intervened massively. Hoover fucked around and the economy plummeted. FDR did the same thing, and a recession that should have recovered within 3 years of Hoover's fucking up lasted until the 1940s. How do people defend this?

The crisis of 1873 lasted 6 years, it was a prequel of the Great Depression, and if it wasn't for interventinism it could have been worse.

You don't think that Obama announcing that he is for gay marriage during an election year is a political stunt?

Realistically, all other recessions were handled the same way. The country would just weather the storm. Hoover actually stepped out a little by attempting some social programs. It was not the administration's that social programs that caused the Depression, the Depression caused the social programs. Also, remember that the Depression was worldwide, and had many contributing factors such as reparations for World War One and, in America, the overuse of credit and a lack of banking checks. I would really suggest that you read up on the Depression and it's causes, they are well documented.

I didn't say the Hoover caused the depression, I'm saying that he made it great. The recession started, Hoover reacted with government intervention and made the whole thing worse.

P.S. Your sig is one of my favorite poems.

No, Hoover reacted with government intervention, though really not all that much, due to the greatness of the Depression. The Depression, and it's severeness, was not the fault of any single person.

And thank you, I like Ozymandias too.

It's getting pretty late so I'll just read off of a book I have on the subject. The first thing Hoover did was, in November of 1929, have a meeting with several major businessman and financiers and worked out a plan where they would cut wages as little as possible. Henry Ford, apparently, promised to raise wages. This led to companies losing profits and not wanting to hire any more workers. Then the book goes on to explain the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which I don't believe I have to explain was downright evil.

Then, it goes on to say that Hoover spent an enormous amount and increased spending by 42% during his first two years in office. This, of course, is coupled with decreased revenue due to the recession. It compares the 1929 recession with the 1920 recession, where the Wilson, and later Harding, administrations slashed the government budget and the recession was over in 2 years.

Then it goes onto the "New Deal Lite" of Hoover's administration. Hoover created the Federal Farm Board that helped subsidize farmers that were running out of business. This was before the crash but he gave the FFB more funds after the recession had started. The FFB also artificially made the farmer's crops cost more than they would and later, started restricting production, while keeping the price supports. After that, Hoover started spending on public works projects and convinced state governors to do the same. In July 1930, Congress approved a $915 million dollar public works project. Lastly, Hoover made the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, lent $1 billion dollars in its first five months of operation to "prop up unhealthy banks and railroads."

Alright, that's probably my longest post ever on this forum. I'm going to bed.

Nope. Pretty obvious that there are not very many gay Republicans.

I'll just throw this and this out there.

Alright the first article doesn't really provide any kind of evidence. As the article mentioned, FDR didn't create jobs, he created work. The difference? The work was economically pointless. 3 billion trees? Impressive, except that it was a complete waste of money. Why would FDR tell people to plant trees during a recession? It's a waste of money. He also made a "job" that had people running around Washington grabbing the tumbleweeds. Jobs like that don't help the economy.

The FDIC is a hindrance to banks because instead of banks having to worry about keeping all the money they should have at their bank, in case someone wants to withdraw, the bank is now insured against bank runs by the government. Basically, the FDIC protects, and encourages, reckless banks to loan out more than they should because the moment they lose too much and don't have any money to give the people who made deposits, the government will bail them out. Of course, this is the taxpayers money, so regular citizens are paying banks to be reckless with the money they deposited. The SEC also hinders the people on Wall Street, though my book doesn't go into as much detail. I'll read up on it some more. Finally, it says that the Great Depression set a precedent for government intervention in the economy. Yes it did. The article seems to think that that is a good thing, I disagree.

The second article seems to present more evidence, though it's misleading. The article also makes the assumption that Hoover did absolutely nothing during his administration, and not the exact same thing as FDR. So yeah, that always makes me giggle before being depressed at the stupidity. Anyway, onto the graphs.

GDP just shows spending. Massive government spending will increase GDP. Fancy that. Then it shows a graph of income going up. Income tends to go up as unemployment goes down. Before you go praising FDR for bringing unemployment down, know that this was just the natural recovery of the economy kicking in after 4 years of being kicked in the gut by Hoover. Just because FDR came into office as the recession finally recovered, doesn't mean he caused it. Correlation =/= Causation. Again, by the time FDR came into office, the economy was naturally fixing itself so unemployment will go down. FDR just made it all worse with his programs. Under his administration recovery was the slowest in any recession ever. The last graph just shows the enormous amount of government spending FDR did. For some reason, the blog is proud of gross overspending and debt accumulation. To each their own I suppose.

9% last time I checked.

The whole idea of FDR creating work, was, unemployment would go down, people would make money, and people would then have money to spend and put back in the economy.