Rating: 
Summary: Did Powell Get The Depression Right?
Review: Powell details many good criticisms of the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations as well as state laws that appear to have been counterproductive in solving the economic crisis. However, he ignores several key points in understanding the Depression. Firstly, there is a rough correlation between when a nation got off the gold standard and when their economy began to recover. Many economists believe FDR's most important positive action was to get the US off the gold standard as soon as he could. Secondly, massive deficit spending began in 1932(under Hoover), yet the GNP didn't begin recovering until 1934, in contradiction to Keynesian predictions. Thirdly, Perrson concluded it was changes in the real(not nominal) interest rates, as influenced by monetary policies, rather than government spending, that explains the ups and downs of the Depression economy....I criticise Powell for not including tables and figures of critical data to support his contentions, as well as ignoring what other countries did and how they fared. I suspect these omissions were often purposeful. After examining the data from various internet sources, FDR comes out looking much better in the big picture than the portrait Powell paints, whatever the seeming counterproductiveness of many of his policies. I should also point out that his basic viewpoint was first articulated by certain european economists in the 1930s, who were drowned out by the Keynesians.
Rating: 
Summary: Yes, millionaires HATED the new deal....
Review: .. then and now, so what is new and radical about this interpretation by one of their paid spokespeople? Perhaps they should be grateful that said "commienizm" kept the real thing from erupting here and for the most part kept their fortunes safe from rampaging mobs.
Rating:
Summary: The Gospel according to The Wall Street Journal
Review: A conservative's revisionist history of FDR. It is always good to revisit popular assumptions to determine their validity but I'd be more impressed by this book if I'd been able to read peer reviews, which I have not been able to find, that substantiate his research and conclusions. 20-20 hindsight is always easy, and I have no doubt that many of the author's claims are valid as to how the New Deal policies prolonged the Depression, and how the New Deal spent money in places that would help it politically rather than in the places that needed it most, but his free market bias is so evident: everything would have been better if the free market had been left alone to run its course. Sure, except for the workingman who was slaving for starvation wages, if he could find work. Child labor, unsafe working conditions, such as the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, which the author refers to as tragic, none of these things are the result of the free market in his view. As long as there are more workers than jobs the free market will never protect worker's rights. He seems to believe that the Union movement was only about obtaining power for power's sake and not about protecing the worker. He accuses the New Deal of using examples of Business abuses that were atypical in order to pass anti-business legislation but is guilty of the same thing in his anti-union bias.
Perhaps this book will bring about a re-examination of the New Deal, and FDR, by an impartial, unbiased academic. Let's hope so.
Rating: 
Summary: FDR Did Not Know Anything About Economics
Review: Academia has spent a lot of time and energy trying to revise the actual performance of FDR's New Deal risky scheme. Liberals tend to elevate those who have not succeeded. Witness the glorification of Jimmy Carter who presided over a terrible period in our nation's history, both foreign and domestic. Now, at last, a book that showcases FDR's policies as the myth that they were. This book demonstrates that FDR knew very little, if anything, about macroeconomic principles that even a first-year sophomore would know. For instance, FDR created a monster-sized bureacracy we all know as Social Security. But as this book demonstrates, there was no need to create a one-size-fits-all bureacracy when many volunteer, profit-oriented, and therefore, private companies were available to do the same thing. Individuals could, of course, buy disability insurance on their own. But that would stop FDR from buying votes. FDR also had totaltarian impulses. He distrusted the private sector and lambasted monopolies, even though he was creating governmental, and therefore, oppressive monopolies that would be impossible to overturn. (For instance, Social Security and the Tennessee Valley Authority are still with us 70 years later). He increased taxes dramatically, and yet he was upset with private business owners for not hiring more workers. It is not surprising: simple economics would say in that oppressive environment investors and businessmen would create a cost-benefit analysis to consider whether it would be wortwhhile to risk principle to earn further profits. If you hear constant criticism of the private enterprise system, increased calls for tax hikes, and oppressive regulations, you would have no choice but to slow down business or quit, completely. Certainly expanding one's business would be out of the question. Yet academics today--who truly are unable to imagine themselves in a cost-benefit analysis business world--still continue to triumph FDR as some sort of political genius. He isn't. And it's time we think of him as the economic crackpot that he truly was. Michael Gordon
Rating:
Summary: Were Stalin and FDR twins?
Review: After reading this book and many Russian history books, I found so many parallels to the actions of Stalin. The command economy, determing the level of production, confiscation of personal property,etc. The only difference is the 20 Million starved, but FDR tried.
Rating:
Summary: Savings and Investment is the lifeblood of a strong economy
Review: And Jim Powell's book exposes how both FDR's New Deal and the interventionist policies of Hoover sucked savings out of the economy and hurled those resources through the inefficient and counterproductive machine of Gov't spending. This book is wonderfully enlightening, loaded w/ juicy nuggets that should make the average Krugmanite squirm -- like how the Fair Labor Standards Act cost 35,000-50,000 Southern African Americans their jobs, the negative redistribution effects of the Social Security System (blacks are poorer for it, and the wealthy prosper from it because they start work later and they live longer), the consistency of high unemployment throughout the FDR years while previous recessions (such as the one in 1920) were solved w/in a year by *cuts* in Gov't spending, the prosperity of NON-TVA states compared to those states which "benefitted" from the Tennessee Valley Authority non-market oriented Gov't intervention, the ludicrous Agriculture Act which destroyed domestic farming goods while relying on importing those same goods from abroad (What in God's name were the New Dealers THINKING!!!), Net private investment fell by 3 billion in the 30s because of over-taxation and regulation, the mortifying similarities between the New Deal and economic Fascism...I won't spoil all the surprises for you... An valuable book, a primer as to what *not* to do in case of recession, and every politician should be forced to read this book, and probably every registered voter as well.
Rating: 
Summary: The Usual Suspects
Review: Cato Institute? P.J.O'Rourke? Thomas Fleming? The book jacket alone pretty much tells all you need to know. The same tiresome right-wing creeps who, with the likes of Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist, hide their hated of our system of government behind the phony "libertarian" label.
Rating:
Summary: There is a better book
Review: Discusses how FDR's new deal policies extended the dpression and hindered recovery. This is true, and reflects the results of modern research, but there is another recent book that covers the same ground a lot better: Rethinking the Great Depression by Smiley.
Rating:
Summary: Historical Perspective of FDR
Review: Excellent book. It tackles the question, "if FDR pulled the country out of the Depression, then why couldn't he conquer the nemisis, chronic unemployment." The unemployment rate at the start of 1940 was still nearly 10%, a rate that would be judged catastrophic by anyone's standard, even after nearly six years of the "New Deal." Powell brings out facts to tell the reader why FDR failed so miserably in an effort to put people back to work. He also went into the other economic programs and "improvements" which can be described as "Keystone Cops" philososphy rather than the "Brain Trust." Whether FDR prolonged the Depression is debatable, since the Republicans did not have a philosophy which would have worked either, but tinkering with the economic system has left the common citizen with less liberty, higher taxes, and more beauracracy. How FDR is hearalded as a great President is put under the microscope if you read this book. The only agreeable point is that FDR solidified the Democrat Party as the dominant party for the last 70 years. His use of the system to ensure the political dominance cannot be disputed. At best, you can only rate him as average. Anything above that would be ignoring the facts. Where Powell fails to go in this book (which is a minor criticism) is the lack of the press to fairly report FDR. If a free press is the safeguard of liberty, where were they? If ANY other President had a fiasco like the NRA he would have been villified and riducled without mercy in the press. Yet, FDR got a pass and was reelected in a landslide. There would have been countless human interest stories of unemployed workers striving to make ends meet, yet the press seemed to be a mouth organ to the FDRfiles in power. FDRfiles will villify this book, but I think it is important to look back and reexamine history and the way history is presented to get a complete view. We should not be swallowing the FDR story written by a favorable press. For an open minded history buff, this is a MUST READ.
Rating:
Summary: Historical Perspective of FDR
Review: Excellent book. It tackles the question, "if FDR pulled the country out of the Depression, then why couldn't he conquer the nemisis, chronic unemployment." The unemployment rate at the start of 1940 was still nearly 10%, a rate that would be judged catastrophic by anyone's standard, even after nearly six years of the "New Deal." Powell brings out facts to tell the reader why FDR failed so miserably in an effort to put people back to work. He also went into the other economic programs and "improvements" which can be described as "Keystone Cops" philososphy rather than the "Brain Trust." Whether FDR prolonged the Depression is debatable, since the Republicans did not have a philosophy which would have worked either, but tinkering with the economic system has left the common citizen with less liberty, higher taxes, and more beauracracy. How FDR is hearalded as a great President is put under the microscope if you read this book. The only agreeable point is that FDR solidified the Democrat Party as the dominant party for the last 70 years. His use of the system to ensure the political dominance cannot be disputed. At best, you can only rate him as average. Anything above that would be ignoring the facts. Where Powell fails to go in this book (which is a minor criticism) is the lack of the press to fairly report FDR. If a free press is the safeguard of liberty, where were they? If ANY other President had a fiasco like the NRA he would have been villified and riducled without mercy in the press. Yet, FDR got a pass and was reelected in a landslide. There would have been countless human interest stories of unemployed workers striving to make ends meet, yet the press seemed to be a mouth organ to the FDRfiles in power. FDRfiles will villify this book, but I think it is important to look back and reexamine history and the way history is presented to get a complete view. We should not be swallowing the FDR story written by a favorable press. For an open minded history buff, this is a MUST READ.
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