Perhaps there is something useful here, but nobody really knows what to do because we now live in a globalized world which is culturally, politically and economically completely different to anything that has ever appeared before.

A world in which powerful corporations and money interests rule to here and not any government. And which thereby set the parameters as to what can and cant be done---the "markets" wont let you do it. A world of 24/7 stock-markets and even more importantly of a world-wide speculative casino "economy" which has nothing whatsoever to do with human well-being, and in fact is completely indifferent to the well-being of any living-breathing-felling being, human or otherwise.

In the meantime these two references describe the reality created in the image of the "free"-market as boosted by Moran and all the other adolescent Beavis' & Buttheads

http://www.ispeace723.org/gcfprinciples4.html

http://www.ispeace723.org/youthepeople3.html

A families financial assets follow proven creativity in adding tangible values which individuals and the community can appreciate. When big governments and their safely employed servants-public waste taxpayers money through prescribed adventurist and costly political solutions, private savings hide for their survival to protect their families. Labor is now orchestrating their prescribed collective savings & taxation burdens long wanted by their zero growth advocates (smaller population = less = more).The nefarious greens and their lazy left liberals will now soon find themselves on the wrong side of the fence which they helped erect. Is this the end of private savings which are normally used to buttress families against theft and lazy government? What ever MP Craig Emerson may say is a poor reflection on labors application, actions and knee - jerk results.

Alan Moran wrote: “Mr Rudd’s remedies for addressing the current economic downturn are conditioned on his views of how the US pulled out of 1930s Great Depression. Unfortunately his understanding of the event is deficient. For example, he seems to be unaware that the US stayed in recession throughout the 1930s in spite of continued pump priming by the Roosevelt administration.”

In the above Mr. Moran exhibits the corporate mindset that is just concerned with corporate balance sheets in the near future,

Roosevelt did nothing less than save capitalism in the US and ensure US dominance in the postwar world.

It is true that the US stayed in recession throughout the 1930s. However, I would mention some of FDR’s policies and their consequences.

A prominent cause of the economic downturn of the 1930s was a glut of inventories. Warehouses were bulging with products, but people could not buy them because they didn’t have the money to do so. Since the producers could not sell their goods they laid off workers, and unemployment grew.

FDR through the National Labor Relations Board and empowering the unions ensured that workers would get paid at levels high enough to buy the products they produced when the economy got going again.

When FDR was elected old people who had worked all their lives had to live in poverty if they had not managed to put money aside or were forced by some unforeseen calamity to use up all their savings. FDR introduced social security which gave old people both security and buying power which helped the economy.

FDR introduced the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) which gave unemployed young men work, repaired infrastructure and helped the environment. Under recent administrations in the US infrastructure has been increasingly neglected, and the environment under Dubya Bush has been disregarded. Dubya has as a rallying call, “Cut taxes.” This was done to such an extent that essential services have been neglected. There was great grumbling as FDR taxed to provide these services. The grumbling was short sighted as a further collapse could have produced a Lenin or Hitler.

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The worldwide recession continued through the 1930s, but the effects would have been far more damaging in the US had not the Rooseveltian policies been adopted.

In his fireside chats Roosevelt gave people hope and a feeling that they were being thought of. Although FDR did not eliminate racism in the US his non-discriminatory policies saw that minorities shared in relief measures.

Before Roosevelt most Americans did not graduate high school. FDR encouraged both education and the arts. The WPA Writer’s Project gave a start to such literary eminences as John Cheever, Conrad Aiken, Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, Arna Bontemps, Malcolm Cowley, Edward Dahlberg, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Kenneth Patchen, Philip Rahv, Kenneth Rexroth, Harold Rosenberg, Studs Terkel, Margaret Walker, Richard Wright, Frank Yerby and Eudora Welty.

Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright and Frank Yerby were black writers who might have languished in obscurity were it not for the WPA Writer’s Project. Saul Bellow won a Nobel prize.

FDR introduced the GI Bill. This gave all veterans of the armed forces an opportunity for further education. Since 14,000,000 had served this made for an educated populace whose contributions were felt in the tremendous increase in industrial productivity, technological and scientific progress and artistic and literary output. I was one of those 14,000,000, and I am grateful for the change in my life due to FDR.

The future of a country depends on much more than its corporate balance sheet. FDR realised that. Alan Moran doesn’t.

Davidf - you are missing a very important aspect of basic economics in your praise of FDR. The basic fact is that you must have a healthy and dynamic industrial sector to generate the necessary taxes and jobs to pull the economy out of a recession. FDR did not address this at all until the advent of WW2 when he inadvertently hit upon the silver bullet. The government started buying zillions of goods and services from businesses rather than just printing up and handing out potloads of money to the unemployed.

Margaret thatcher had a wonderful saying "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money"

david f

none of what you said pulled the US out of the recession

what eventually pulled the US out of the recession was war, ie Great Britain paying for US to supplied war material and food. That popped up the US economy and filled out the factories and the warehouses, which made them rich. US got riched because of the war

After the War, there was the re-building of Europe and Asia, and America got even richer

Very little of what FDR did worked