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ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
Follow Reagan model to end financial crisis
The crash of 1929 foretold the Great Depression by four years.
By 1933, 89 percent of stock and bond value vanished, the economy shrank one-third, thousands of banks closed, one-third of the money supply had vanished and unemployment was 25.3 percent.
FDR’s answer: vast federal spending, tough new regulations on business management and more taxes.
The Depression lasted until war orders from the allies brought our industry back to life. Unemployment was above 14 percent until 1940. In May 1939, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau testified to Congress:
“We are spending more money than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. … I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started … and an enormous debt to boot.”
Politically, the New Deal was a smashing success, with FDR’s landslides in 1932, 1934 and 1936 wiping out the GOP. Radio made FDR a national hero with “fireside chats” propaganda. The New Deal failed utterly to restore prosperity. Nonetheless, generations of schoolchildren were indoctrinated with false New Deal success propaganda.
Ronald Reagan inherited the economic crisis of 1980, the worst since the Depression. Jimmy Carter’s “stagflation” had home mortgage interest rates up to 21 percent and inflation at 13 percent.
Reagan’s answer was the tight money policy of Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and across-the-board tax cuts of 25 percent and slashing the highest income tax rates from 70 percent to 28 percent. From there we had expansion until Reagan rode off into the sunset, having created 20 million new jobs.
Reagan followed the examples of Warren Harding and Cal Coolidge, who had cut liberal Woodrow Wilson’s wartime tax rates of near 70 percent to 25 percent, resulting in “The Roaring ’20s,” a time of unrivaled prosperity.
The JFK tax cuts of the 1960s, also a Reagan consideration, were equally successful.
Harding, Coolidge, JFK and Reagan all bet on the private sector as the engine of prosperity. All succeeded. Franklin Roosevelt bet on government. And the New Deal failed. It was World War II that pulled the United States out of the Depression of the 1930s.
The Obama plan calls for spending more than $4 trillion, including the interest to be paid. That is $25,000 for every working man and women in America. It will have to be paid or ships with oil, food and foreign goods will stop coming to America.
Now we know what he meant by “change.”
Adrian Vance
Lakeport, Calif.
The Great Emancipator
was really a racist?
Most of us went to government schools where we were taught the historical facts as they were supposed to have happened, irregardless of the politically incorrect stuff that actually happened.
We all know that Lincoln freed the slaves and that Lincoln was the first president to demand equal rights for blacks.
Of course both of those statements are false.
The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free any slaves in Union states. It freed slaves only in Southern states the Union armies had not conquered. The slaves in America were not freed until after Lincoln’s death when the 13th Amendment was ratified.
A number of statements and acts by Lincoln seemed to say he was a racist who didn’t think black people were equal to white people.
On Oct. 13, 1858, during his famed debates with Judge Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln said he considered there to be basic black and white racial differences which, would forever forbid blacks living together with whites on the footing of perfect equality.
In 1862, Lincoln was involved with plans that removed American blacks by acquiring property in Central America, South America or Liberia in Africa and shipping them there so they wouldn’t have to mingle with white folks in the United States.
The version of Abe Lincoln we were taught about is certainly a much nicer version of Abe Lincoln than the racist Abe Lincoln that actually existed.
Mike Ross
Tempe