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Originally posted by Sidd Finch
You see no difference between a recession and a depression. There is such a difference.
Hoover tried your approach.
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The hell he did. He really did do nothing. H just thought the market would eventually correct itself.
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Originally posted by Sidd Finch FDR's approach was to build buying capacity and employment from the bottom, and to find means to pay for it so that the national fisc was not destroyed in the process.
Bush learned the lesson that tax cuts are desired by his base at any time, and for whatever excuse. Surplus? Cut taxes (don't pay off the debt). Recession? Cut taxes. War? Cut taxes. Polls slipping? Cut taxes. Suggesting that tax cuts were Bush's response to recession is ludicrous -- they were his response to the sunrise.
And I've yet to see any decent argument for why the Bush tax cuts -- rather than the massive infusion of government spending (ah, those bedrock conservative principles) and the lowest interest rates in history for the first five years of his term -- were responsible for what recovery we've had.*
*Once upon a time, Republicans argued that, in fact, federal economic policies had nothing to do with recession or growth -- it was all just the business cycle. Of course, that was when Clinton had been president for five years and the economy was doing better than ever. Go figure.
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It was definitely a Keynsian approach to the problem which shocked me. Republicans had been saying for years that the Keynsian approach - going into deficit - was hooey (including Milton Friedman). But Bush did it and it seemed to work. Although not nearly as well as WWII killed the Depression.
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