October 11, 2009
Britain's Central Planning Death Panels
October 11, 2009
Free Market M.D.
October 11, 2009
Economies of Scale in Compliance
October 11, 2009
Balan's Challenge
October 10, 2009
The Pleasure of Telling Others What to Do
October 10, 2009
Gonick the Great - and How He Could Have Been Greater
October 9, 2009
More Scott Sumner
October 9, 2009
Not From The Onion
October 9, 2009
Thoughts on a Second Stimulus
This is all beginning to get rather amusing, but do keep in mind that the point of Gross's piece was that in fact at least in terms of employment both Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR did far better than did the US economy in the late 1930s, even if both had problems under the surface that made them less viable in the long run. What is not clear at all is whether a more free market US economy would have done better than it did. We simply do not know, although most on this blog probably believer that it would have. Fine, but keep in mind that when U. of Chicago's Arnold Harberger (who I saw hobbling on his cane a week ago there) did his estimate of the size of "his" inefficiency due to monopoly triangles back in 1954, they turned out to be very small. Very easy to exaggerate the stagnationist impact of FDR's various monopolizations and cartelizations.
Bush is going crazy. He is shooting down any way out of the mess. Meanwhile, the US and the dollar are ready to collapse. The fight is to persuade the US Congress to adopt a real capital budget, and get out of the Thirty Years War in Iraq, Iran, etc.
The idea of an expanded war is the option of "stabilization" of the financial bubble. Look at the US bombing of Somalia, this is part of it. Force panic stricken people to do anything for a so-called "war economy".
Meanwhile, the widespread fraud of not reporting the true state of the Housing Market, is seen in the NY Times, Jan. 7th. Also see Moody's economy.com . The US Comerce Dept figures reported for new home sales both 1. significantly overstate the level of new home sales, and 2. understate the number of new homes listed for sale- inventory of homes for sale- due to Commerce's not taking account of people cancelling their contracts to buy new homes.
http://www.realcrash.com
...except for the fact Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini were all non-smokers... :)
I think FDR's real crime was the centralization of political power in the federal government away from the states rather than economic foibles. Under FDR, everything became interstate commerce, especially if it had nothing to do with commerce.