Doug Henwood responds: >> I'd say there are several differences between them. One is that FDR's >> unemployment >> rate started at 25% and Obama's around 8%. Another is that when FDR took >> office, >> thousands of banks had failed; when Obama did, the government had bailed the >> biggies out. Yet another is the existence of the USSR and a higher level of >> political >> consciousness among the masses, and a genuine fear within the bourgeoisie of >> failure and/or expropriation. But if you want to get personal about it, >> which isn't >> unimportant, FDR came out of the aristocracy and didn't mind stepping on its >> toes; he >> didn't have to impress them. Obama, however, came from nowhere and was >> groomed >> by the elite at nearly every turn. He's in awe of Wall Street and the >> establishment and, >> unlike Roosevelt who publicly welcomed the hatred of the plutocrats (even >> while he >> was saving their asses), Obama openly craves their love.
I don't disagree. I would add several points. First, with respect to the USSR, it had only been around for a dozen years in 1933. We now have 90 years of experience with communist rule, as well as 60 years of the post-WWII larger government financed by deficits. We also are collectively much wealthier than we were in 1933. Therefore, if we imagined Obama attempting to replicate the New Deal in 2011, he would be facing a much more confident and organized opposition because of the historical experience that did not exist in 1933, and a wealtier population with significantly different goals and interests. Second, I think the "New Deal" is a loose term in context. I was commenting on the response of Roosevelt/Obama to the immediate economic/financial crisis. I don't want to get into a big debate about this, but I don't think there is any real evidence that Roosevelt's economic programs intended to address the immediate crisis, such as the National Recovery Administration, Agricultural Adjustment Act, his first year budget, etc., had any casual link to ending the economic/financial crisis. Roosevelt's lasting legacy, what we think of today as the New Deal, were programs such as Social Security, Wagner Act, etc., that liberal leftists supported then and support now as ends in themselves, regardless of the state of the economy, and which at best ameliorated social conditions as opposed to remedying the underlying problems of the economy. Third, Roosevelt and Obama dealt with significantly different banking crises. While there are interesting similarities between Roosevelt inheriting the RFC and Obama inheriting TARP, interstate banking was effectively prohibited in 1933 (in many states banks could not even have branches), so Roosevelt was facing a banking crisis of thousands of small banks with concentrated loans and no real ability to diversify, while we live in a world of diversified national banks. In this sense, Obama has a much easier job than Roosevelt. David Shemano _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
