Rating: 
Summary: quick comment:
Review: This is a great book. Ignore the fool below citing GNP figures that supposedly contradict Jim Powell's work here. The GNP is a joke. Remember, GNP rises when government spending rises, even though government spending does not increase wealth (it merely moves existing wealth around because all government spending must either come from expropriating from producers through taxation or by printing money). Just because the GNP is rising does not mean that the economy is improving. (Consider this: the neocon's war in Iraq is draining huge amounts of private wealth from the economy, and yet GNP would show that the war is GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY. Sorry, that doesn't fly). Before you pull figures out of your azz you should understand what they mean. Buy the book, it's good. Also pick up Murray Rothbard's _America's Great Depression_, which examines the cause of the Depression with using Austrian business cycle theory and analyzes Hoover's economically destructive policies. (Had Rothbard gotten into FDR's policies, he probably would have a written 3000 page taxonomy on intervention.) This makes a great companion to Rothbard's classic.
Rating:
Summary: Economics of the Raw Deal
Review: This is a true analysis of the economics surrounding the Raw Deal and FDR. Those who criticize Powell either haven't read the book, are socialist sympathizers or have never read & understood Ludwig von Mises. Some actually use Keynes to prove that FDR was right. Keynesian type government interference in the free-market is one reason for a bust. Also relevant is the classic Rothbard query: What has government done to our money?
Rating:
Summary: One of the most incompetent presidents in US history
Review: This is an excellent book about one of the most incompetent US presidents. I wish to see another book about FDR, one taking a critical look at his role in WWII: two years of denial of Holocaust, and subsequent sell off of half of Europe to Stalin's Soviet Union.
Rating: 
Summary: extremist politics masquerading as history
Review: This is not history but political advocacy-it is an exercise in the selective use of historical information to support a set of radical (in this case, libertarian) economic policy prescriptions for today. These include deep tax cuts and the elimination of labor unions, minimum wage laws, and the Federal Reserve. In order to make his case, the author freely indulges in distortions, omissions, and perversions of the historical data of the 1930s. The constraints of this forum allow for the mention of only a few examples.First-a distortion. The author has framed the economic situation in a very misleading way. Between 1929 and 1933, real GNP declined 35 percent and industrial production fell by more than half. It is a simple mathematical fact that if a parameter falls by 35 percent, it must increase by 54 percent to reach the previous level. The author does not recognize-or does not want the reader to recognize-that this kind of growth takes time. Instead, in a facile comparison, he claims that, but for the New Deal, the Great Depression could have been ended much more quickly, citing the fact that the United States recovered from the brief 1920 depression in about a year. (I suggest the fans of this book do a little math and see how long it takes the economy, given some realistic growth rate, to grow by 54%.) Second-some omissions. One would never know from this book such basic facts about the period as: (1) the actual recovery from the Great Depression began as soon as Roosevelt took office, (2) the economy grew at a rapid rate from 1933-1937 and from 1938 to 1941, and (3) FDR's actions were crucial for the turnaround. From 1933 to 1937 real GNP grew at an average rate of 8% per year and between 1938 and 1941 it grew over 10% per year-impressive growth rates by any standard. The crucial event in the initial recovery was Roosevelt's decision to take the country off the gold standard and the subsequent depreciation of the dollar. This move, which had been fiercely resisted by the Hoover administration, provided a basis for an increase in the money supply as gold flowed into the United States. This recovery was interrupted when the Federal Reserve abruptly contracted the money supply in 1937. The author describes this contraction and notes its adverse effects but immediately confuses the issue by including other "possible" contributors-of course these are New Deal programs. The author then summarizes the issues in his title: "How Did New Deal Policies Cause the Depression of 1938?" In fact, the 1938 depression was caused by the sharp contraction of the money supply, not FDR and the New Deal, and the recovery from this depression occurred once the money supply resumed its rapid growth. Third-two perversions. The author rejects the consensus among serious historians (and not just among "liberal" historians) that Roosevelt's decisive actions ended the banking panic-instead, he suggests that not all the reopened banks were fully solvent (an irrelevant point) and that therefore, Roosevelt's actions amounted to a fraud perpetrated on the public. The author's discussion of federal deposit insurance is equally perverse. Once again, there is little disagreement that the introduction of deposit insurance (which FDR opposed) helped restore confidence in the banking system, as even the author admits in passing. And, in fact, the author cannot show how this feature in any way "prolonged" the depression. So instead, he cites the contribution of deposit insurance to the savings and loan crisis fifty years later. Finally, as if the book were not bad enough, the publisher, not content with the author's assertion that FDR and the New Deal prolonged the depression, has completely inverted the truth by claiming, on the book jacket, that the New Deal "deepened the Great Depression" and then, in what is, perhaps, the crowning touch, placing on the cover of a book devoted to the flaying of FDR and his economic policies a photo of a relief line that was taken during the first half of the Hoover presidency. Although this book contains a great deal of information on the New Deal-and there is much to criticize about the New Deal-it has presented it in such a distorted way that it does little to advance our understanding of the depression, of FDR, of the New Deal, of the problems faced by policy makers, or of the era in general. Judging from the reviews on this site, the book's many shortcomings will be of little or no concern to its intended audience since most readers-even the self-proclaimed history-buffs-appear to think that the value of a history book is determined by how well it supports one's political position. As such, this book provides a sharp reminder that, at least when it comes to the writing of American history, extremism in defense of liberty is a vice that is still very much with us.
Rating:
Summary: Should be made required reading for all Americans.
Review: This is the best book on FDR and the New Deal that I have read. Powell explains in detail how the New Dealers came to power and why they failed. He combs over all major FDR legislation and proposals to explain just how they hurt the United States. One can only hope that a wider audience will read this wonderful book in order to make known just how bad FDR was.
Rating:
Summary: Garbage
Review: This is the type of garbage which the propagandists from the right use to brainwash the willing. As this current president attempts to dismantle Social Security, his henchmen strive to discredit the Roosevelt legacy. That legacy was and is remarkable although most of it took place in the first 100 days. The reactionaries in the Senate essentially limited what he could accomplish. Without Roosevelt we would be a nation of serfs. Without Roosevlet we would probably have had revolution.
Rating:
Summary: Required Reading
Review: This should be required reading in High School and College history courses. We now know that much of the history of the era is Liberal myth-making, written by the New Dealers themselves. This shatters the myths with well-researched economic data and a serious attention to many details. Similarly, the "Venona secrets" books are shattering the myths of the 'anti-antiCommunists', as we now know that 100s of Stalin's spies and Communist agents were infiltrating the US Government, and Roosevelt did nothing to stop it. In 1940, when news that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy got to Roosevelt, he laughed it off, told the aide who borught the news to him to "go F--- yourself" and then went on to appoint Hiss as a key State Dept official, who worked at Yalta, set up the UN, etc. Hiss was later uncovered as a Soviet spy and convicted of perjury relating to his testimony about it. This book and the revelations of the Venona secrets shatters the myth of FDR as a great President. FDR was powerful, but his bad economics and his blind spots in cozying up to Stalin and ignoring the Communist dangers both harmed us in the 1930s and set us up for the Cold War confrontation later.
Rating:
Summary: Long overdue economic analysis
Review: While FDR was a strong negotiator and foreign policy savvy (I don't buy the conspiracy theory that he knew about the Pearl Harbor attacks) his economic policies weren't the huge success touted to be
Rating:
Summary: waited 20 years for this book
Review: Why were there no bank failures in canada.
why did unemployment never fall below 14%
Does anyone thing the federal government that brought us cabrini green's could actually make the tva work?
can libs give even one example where regulation has done what it was supposed to.
The book was clear, well written and a story that has not been told to a general audience since it happened.
|
