We've Been Down This Road Before: A Great Depression Quiz
Half of these quotes are taken from Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s "The Crisis of the Old Order," about the Great Depression and the coming of the New Deal; the other half are taken from media sources during the last four years. All proper names and specific dates are underlined and have been replaced with their generic counterparts. A small portion of the text has been edited for concision and clarity, with any obvious anachronisms removed.
Your task is to decide what era and person each excerpt refers to: a) Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt, and the events of 1929-1933, or b) George W. Bush, John McCain, Barack Obama, and the events of the last four years.
1) The President's speeches offered his social philosophy in dry pellets of aphorism. "The chief business of the American people," he said, "is business." "If the Federal government should go out of existence, most people would not detect the difference in the affairs of their daily life for some time... The chief way the federal government can serve business is to shrink itself."
2) "The government is just a business," said the Secretary of the Treasury, "and can and should be run on business principles." The Administration's interest was in the reduction of tax rates, especially in the highest brackets. According to the Secretary of the Treasury, everyone knew "of businesses which have not been started, and of new projects which have been abandoned, all for one reason - high taxes."
3) Through the decade, profits rose over 80% as a whole, or twice as much as productivity; the profits of financial institutions rose a fantastic 150%. Output per man-hour in manufacturing rose almost 32%, while hourly wages rose but slightly over 8%.
4) The Administration's tax policy placed its emphasis on relief for millionaires rather than for consumers. The top 2.3% of the population was responsible for two-thirds of the nation's savings.
5) The torrent of excess money, pouring into the market, swept stock prices upward. Even the leaders of business could not decipher the intricate financial structures they were erecting.
6) The power of the Federal Reserve System was used mostly on the side of easy money.
7) Federal aid, the President said, would lessen the sense of local responsibility; it would reduce the size of private charity. Many conservatives invoked moral considerations to justify this viewpoint, citing the corrupting effects of government handouts.
8) The President's attitude in press conferences aroused serious concerns. He played favorites and complained to publishers of reporters whose stories he did not like. Gradually he began to cancel his press conferences. In his last two years, he held hardly more than one a month. The conferences themselves consisted increasingly of official handouts. Bumbling attempts by White House secretaries to withhold news and to control the writing of stories only aggravated the situation.
9) As President, he dedicated himself to inactivity. "No other President in my time," said the White House usher, "ever slept so much." In his dozen or so waking hours, he did as little as possible.
10) The sense of popular hatred wounded the President. "It is a cruel world," he remarked at one point. The President preferred to discuss matters with people who he knew in advance would agree with him. Criticism began to seem to him a dangerous threat to the American way of life. He regarded some of it as "unpatriotic."
11) The Republican party had been in complete control of all the branches of government - the executive, the legislative, and the Supreme Court.
12) At the end of September, the Republican candidate told an adviser that, "the only possibility of winning the election, which is lost now, would be exciting a fear of what the Democratic nominee would do."
13) The Democratic nominee, the Republican candidate charged, was "proposing changes... which would destroy the very foundations of our American system."
14) The Democratic candidate, hearing the speech, said indignantly, "I simply will not let the Republican nominee question my Americanism."
15) The Democratic nominee had moments of concreteness, but a vagueness remained. He talked, defining his direction, clarifying his tasks, but avoiding rigid commitment.
16) The system rested in the end on confidence, on faith; and the very elements of confidence and faith were trickling away. As the nation's banks staggered under the weight of debt, a financial crisis seemed inescapable. And leadership seemed more futile than ever; the President, mute and helpless in Washington; the President-elect, waiting affably but without authority.
17) The solution favored on Wall Street was to authorize the government to deposit money without security in all banks in need of help. The President-elect watched with some amusement while the bankers who had so high-mindedly objected to federal assistance for the unemployed now demanded such assistance for themselves.
18) As for the President-elect, no one could tell what lay behind the imperturbable composure. In part, no doubt, he knew that what happened before inauguration would be blamed on his predecessor, not on himself. Beyond this, he had a deep and unquestioning confidence in the energy and inventiveness of free society. American democracy, he believed, had not had its fair test. Now the Presidency itself seemed to offer the last hope for national revival.
Answers:
1) Calvin Coolidge
2) Andrew Mellon (Secretary of the Treasury), Calvin Coolidge, 1920s
3) Calvin Coolidge
4) Calvin Coolidge
5) Calvin Coolidge, 1920s
6) 1920s
7) Herbert Hoover
8) Herbert Hoover
9) Calvin Coolidge
10) Herbert Hoover
11) 1920s
12) Hoover, FDR
13) FDR, Hoover
14) FDR, Hoover
15) FDR
16) Hoover, FDR
17) FDR
18) FDR
*** It's a trick quiz. All of the quotes refer to the events of 1929-1933 and to Coolidge, Hoover, and Roosevelt.
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I'm not economist, but this is from last February:
http://www
I thought something was fishy - none of those quotes reflected the depth of corruption we have now.
Corporate profits in the US "averaged 8.2 percent from 1900 to 1920 and reminaed at 8.2 percent from 1920 to 1929." "..wages going to employees actually rose during the1920s from 55 to 60 percent of corporate income." "..the percentage of GNP that went to consumption expenses did not fall, but actually rose from 68 percent in 1920 to 75 percent in 1927, 1928, and 1929."
Read the original statement carefully. It doesn't necessarily contradict what you say. Profits were up "80% for the decade." That's actually less than 8.2% compounded annually. The original statement also says "hourly wages" and implies in manufacturing, not all wages.
So scary!
This is amazing, and should be sent to everyone you know.
New study about FDR. Here's a quick note about it.
"Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years."
For the entire article: http://www
And your point is? Go ahead, make clear what your point is.
Some possibilities:
1. FDR was a crappy president.
2. FDR's New Deal policies never should have been enacted, i.e., the country would have been better off both in the short term AND in the long term if he had not enacted them.
Well? Is your point #1? Is it #2? Is it both? I would really like for you to MAKE. IT. CLEAR. exactly what your freakin' point is. That is, rather than just managing to find one particular pair of economists that make a particular assertion that caters to your deluded right-wing fantasies and ideology-b
I'm waiting.
Nobel winning economist Paul Krugman spanked George Will severely for just that same unsupportable nonsense.
Can you say NEO-CON REVISIONISM? It's easy, but sayin so don't make it so. There lies the wide gulf separating us into factions: those who accept unattributable dogma and those who question the veracity of the legions of pundits who quite simply make s*it up.
If America survives, 50 years from now people will look back on the period from Reagan to Bush and will wonder how the American people ever fell for trickle down economics and why we stood by as the rich looted the country
"Fell for trickle down economics" Since Reagan became President, the country has experienced unprecedented prosperity with tremendous GDP growth, record consumption, historical low unemployment rates, historical low inflation, only two short and shallow recessions (until a month ago), massive construction everywhere, a massive increase in the availability and quality of consumer goods, and a massive increase in consumer services. What is not to like?
And you seriously contend that America is better off in 2008 than it was in 2000.
Yes or no.
And steadily decreasing wages for the working class.
all smoke and mirrors - now what is the national debt, how fast is it now growing (or accelerating), what is the average personal debt per household, how high are our country's trade imbalances - however, record consumption, availability of consumer goods seems accurate.
Reagan set the records for national debt, records that George W. Bush broke. We also experienced the savings and loan crisis, record spending on national defense, at least three wars (depending on how you count), and set up the current economic crises. We had a dot.com bubble and a real estate bubble that resulted from attempts to free markets that have always needed some controls. Reagan and Greenspan were behind the real beginning of our current crisis. They started taking down the firewall between the banks and the stock market.
Reagan perpetuated at long-standing policy of taking from the middle class and giving to the wealthy. He overspent on national defense at the expense of domestic infrastructure. He postured as though he alone brought down the Soviet Union, when it was a series of presidents beginning with Eisenhower.
We lived on borrowed money for twenty years, beginning with the so-called conservative, Ronald Reagan. We're now paying for his mistakes.
Ha ha very funny. I wondered as I was going through it why so much of it seemed to be from the 1920s.
We need a word for this.
It's all Bushed up?
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