Hoover caused our first Great Depression - Bush caused the Second

Don't forget it.

Shit-for-brains couldn't do anything that complex without help.

Probably starting in earnest during the 70's in the private sector with "our friends" over at the Chamber of Commerce paving the way for heavier lifting of changing regulations, winning hearts and minds, and making trade agreements for Reagan and BushCo Classic.

The fascist leaning private/public partnership had to work hand in hand, picking up where the other left off in order to defeat, circumvent, and out maneuver the protections FDR put in place to prevent the Capitalists from suiciding again and taking the country with them but they were very patient and single minded.

Still, it took a couple of conciliatory type Democratic Congresses and somewhat of a collaborator Democratic President to weaken the laws and legitimize the mentality to fully set up Junior's Godzilla meets Tokyo final hurah.
Even still, if someone had the sense of purpose, the wherewithal to fight back hard, and to repudiate and hold the crooks accountable we may have turned away from it really completely going down the tubes but we ended up with a non-confrontational, conciliatory, and somewhat collaborative leader who is not willing to name names, place blame, or oppose the wealthy significantly so we're probably as fucked as we would be with Hoover, who was also a smart and decent chap that was not one to rock the boat or cast doubt on "the common wisdom" and trusted the maniacs in the private sector.

The Republicans built this trainwreck but no way it gets out of hand like this without fuckwits on our side refusing to resist the whole way and far too often agreeing in substance. Also it is a failing of the populace who is easily led to blaming the "other" for the visible slippage and forgetting the stories from their parents and grandparent while grandpa and dad allowed greed and fear to lead them astray even with their recollection of horrible times.

Why worry about corporate overreach and power over government when you know the New Deal is in place when "that awful Jane Fonda", the "negros", "the sissies", "the Devil's weed", and "commies" are right there to blame.

How easy it is to forget about Ike's warning about the MIC when decade after decade "the Godless commies" were about to vaporize us all.

The stupid, passive, and ignorant are ever easy pickings for the evil and the greedy.

Junior was but the final nail.

In the 30s the suffering was very communal. The loss of money and jobs was felt by people in a far different way than today. There was no safety net of unemployment insurance or food stamps that mute the pain and thus the suffering was felt in a far more direct way. The economic collapse of the new millenium was slow and manifest in a far more personal way. Easy credit made it possible for people to live beyond their means and run up huge amounts of debt that make many who are employed also part of the new working poor.

This suffering is contrasted with the growth of the "global economy" where off shoring and outsourcing means greater profits and where the rich are now playing on a global casino and have seen their wealth increase...offsetting the losses of the vast majority. We're not seeing bread lines or people selling apples but the depression has hit just as hard and there's no easy answers as to a way out.

With a gridlocked and divided government and political culture the chances for the working poor are not very good as their interests will always be trumped by the big money.

You aren't looking.

Now we have Hoover after Bush.

He has been more like FDR than Hoover in that sense.

bank bail-outs and a pathetically inadequate stimulus the employment-creation effects of which have already zeroed-out. Obama's embrace of the Big Deal and further federal budget and employment cuts -- instead of the New Deal -- can only make things far, far worse. (BLS Statistics, Number of employees, monthly change) http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output_view=net_1mth

Rightwing economists are saying unemployment is "structural"; it's now at 30½% according to this article. There's no way we're going to exit this 2nd Great Depression without govt. intervention such as a WPA, etc.

how exactly did Bush create the second depression? He is a lot of things-- war criminal, dumbass, rich wanker, etc. but he did not repeal Glass-Steagall. He did not create the trade policies that benefitted off-shoring--those were there before he took office. We were in a decline before he came into office. He was just unlucky enough to be in office when the housing bubble burst. Clinton was lucking enough to be in office when the dot-com bubble developed and left as it was busting. I think you give presidents more credit than they deserve with our economic boom/bust cycle.

I don't think George Bush-- the man who brought us Perm-A-War and the Patriot Act was a good president by any means. His worst policies continue to stay in place---why?

All spending isn't the same and far too little consideration is given to the impact of the bureaucracy that executes and oversees the country. Bush wasn't just "unlucky" he took advantage of the decades of groundwork laid by others and used every too at his disposal to complete the effort and to make any reversal damn tough by digging a big ass hole and pissing away the resources needed to have a free hand to remake the wheel.

Bush-the-Lesser was just the last cowboy riding the Free Trade/Free-Markets/Deregulation horse
when it dropped dead.



Who will STAND and FIGHT for THIS American Majority?
You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their excuses.

He didn't do much to help us out of it, and what he did do seemed to backfire, but to say that he caused the Great Depression is simply wrong.

That fault, much like today's, lies with Hoover's predecessor Coolige. Also, it was the culmination of decades of unrestricted capitalism run amok. That's what caused the Great Depression, not Hoover.

"Let's also bear in mind that Obama has had to govern in the face of two unprecedented difficulties: the worst recession since the Great Depression and a ferociously obstructive, hyper-partisan and hyper-ideological Republican Party. Both of these have made governance nearly impossible and, since the Republicans regained a majority in the House, essentially impossible at the legislative level."'

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/07/wha

Most of us would differ with the author in that FDR faced an even worse economic disaster, but the second point is valid in the sense that FDR didn't face "a ferociously obstructive, hyper-partisan and hyper-ideological Republican Party" (except in the Supreme Court) because they had been discredited and reduced to small minority in congress.

Hoover & AWOL Bush are both compleat RepubliCONs - both raped America and Americans with their VooDoo Republicon strategeries, and then fattened up the flab centers of their fatcat cronies (R).

was innocent. So do not expect them to see this our way.

It was multi-causal and world-wide.

At root was unregulated speculation in the stock market with none-existent money ultimately 'provided' by unsecured loans from banks. Does that sound familiar? Stocks are not 'investments,' they are pieces of paper worth what someone is willing to pay for them.

Hoover was out of touch - as is Obama - and he turned - as does Obama - to the very people who created the problem to solve it.

The New Deal truly was a New Deal for Americans (one which the Fascists are still trying to dismantle). The New Deal did help and it probably prevented an actual revolution in this country.

The income disparity in America is now more marked than in the Gilded Age, more marked than during the Great Depression itself.

Now is time for another dealing of the cards.

For this, we need another president: One who actually supports a socially progressive government ... one who is actually a Democrat.

And it's surely more complicated than "Hoover caused it."