Bloody Monday: Over 71,400 jobs lost, page 6

Originally posted by poet1b
The great depression was already in full free fall by the time Smoot Hawley was passed in June 0f 1930, let alone before it could be enacted and begin to fully take effect. The Great Depression bottomed out around the beginning of 1932, by which time Smoot Hawley would have just began to have its effect.

The Great Depression was a result of government not taking action, instead of government getting too much involved.

econ161.berkeley.edu...

The Federal Reserve thought it knew what it was doing: it was letting the private sector handle the Depression in its own fashion. It saw the private sector's task as the "liquidation" of the American economy. And it feared that expansionary monetary policy would impede the necessary private-sector process of readjustment.

Yea, right . That's what Keynesians claim and which is proved wrong, and seeing how much starts your reply got, it's seems there are a lot of socialists/leftists/liberals in ATS .

Read:
Five Myths About the Great Depression Five Myths About the Great Depression

Just a parts:

What the crash mainly precipitated was a raft of wrongheaded policies that did major damage to the economy -- beginning with the disastrous retreat into protectionism marked by the passage of the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which passed the House in May 1929 and the Senate in March 1930, and was signed into law by Hoover in June 1930. As prices fell, Smoot-Hawley doubled the effective tariff duties on a wide range of manufactures and agricultural products. It triggered the beggar-thy-neighbor policies of countervailing tariffs that caused the international economy to collapse.
...
Hoover's disastrous agricultural policies involved the know-it-all Hoover acting as his own agriculture secretary and in fact writing the original Agricultural Marketing Act that evolved into Smoot-Hawley. While exports accounted for 7% of U.S. GDP in 1929, trade accounted for about one-third of U.S. farm income. The loss of export markets caused by Smoot-Hawley devastated the agricultural sector.

Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, May 1939:"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and now if I am wrong somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosper. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started. And enormous debt to boot."

reply to post by Vojvoda

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Yeah, I have heard this nonsense from free market faithful so many times I can't count them. The claim is made, but there is no logic or reason backing it. Again, the facts, the Great Depression began in 1929 after a decade of free market policies, was in full swing all over the globe before Smoot Hawley was ever signed into law in Jun of 1930, and by the time it could began to have any effect, the economy had already bottomed out in Jan of 1932. MAYBE Smoot Hawley extended the depression, BUT it certainly did not cause it. Germany climbed out of the depression by spending far more money. In fact, it was the huge expenditure of money for WW II that finally ended the depression.

GW and the repub congress had already destroyed the U.S. economy long before they decided to bailout the investment banking crooks.

reply to post by desert

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Thanks, yes, I remember the S&L debacle, and essentially a complete robbery. That is why I was so amazing that people could vote another Bush into office. I guess you can fool enough of the people, enough of the time to create these types of messes. What amazes me is that there are people who still support the failed free market policies that consistently create this type of mess.

It's not really about the U.S., it is about International Corporations, what they manage to do. Here in the U.S. we are able to barely hang on to a few of our freedoms, and most of those have been taken away over the last 28 years as corporations have gained more and more power. The same IC's have buggered the whole planet under the con job of the free market.

People continue to believe in this free market nonsense, that is what amazes me. It's like communism, or socialism, people keep believeing in these three unrealistic ideals of economics, always with the same claim, it isn't real socialism/communism/free marketism, that is why it failed, if it was real socialism/communism/free marketism it would have succeeded.

reply to post by poet1b

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Indeed!
Growing up in a two party family, I heard from both sides, and the Republican Party was always the party of big business. (And Democrats were the war party...interesting as the Dems have been labeled sissies by RP hawks and neocons.)

This was until the RP took up religion, fundamentalist religion precisely, in the 1970's. They have used the anti-choice, anti-gay (and angry white male--my brothers-in-law, ex) platforms to attract voters, to be voted into power, to then enable corporations to gain power in Washington.
haha During the 1980's my family gatherings provided some heated discussions. (A sister voted for RR but quit voting RP when she gave birth to a daughter and it dawned on her that her daughter's right to a safe abortion should not be taken away, leading once again to botched abortions.)

Corporations began to hedge their bets and donate to both parties, but their best bet was always RP. As long as free market fundamentalists controlled power, corporations could get whatever they wanted re international trade, shaping energy policy, etc. Good things (such as capitalism) done badly can be disastrous. Witness the current situation.

Interesting, I can remember when American corporations actually were proud to be American. Now, corporations want to be international, severing allegiance to the USA, except for asking for tax breaks and bailouts.

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