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"One other crucial difference is that the U.S. today is far less likely to engage in the stupid measures that FDR implemented in the 1930s to "fix" the Great Depression -- which ended up making the Depression far worse than it would have otherwise been."

You might consider that Bush has adopted the FDR receipe of priming the economy with deficit government dollars. FDR filled the job needs that private industry did not provide. FDR was doing OK until the Commies took him over.

Some history. "The Great Depression brought about severe economic hardships in America and around the world. People were opportunistic, wanting any type of advantage that could be given to them. One such group of people were the World War I veterans and their families; who wanted a bonus for their services in the Great War now, instead of in 1945. During this turbulent time, the United States government was very concerned with political uprisings that tried to overthrow the government. The government's great concern about riots and political uprisings during the Great Depression led to hasty actions to quell the Bonus March demonstrations, created animosity towards President Hoover, and eventually forced him out of office."

Actually it was a war that ended the Great Depression.

You might consider that Bush has adopted the FDR receipe of priming the economy with deficit government dollars.

That's not entirely accurate.
Dubya's deficits more closely mirror LBJ's "Great Society".
He's spending money like a drunken sailor on BOTH "guns and butter".

The measures implemented by the Roosevelt administration to control prices were an absolute disaster, and were largely responsible for prolonging the Depression.

It was the height of idiocy to have people scraping along to make ends meet while at the same time the government was destroying large quantities of agricultural commodities just to support the incomes of U.S. farmers.

placemark

Agreed on your history recitation. I thought you might also want to take a note from this history text the widespread myths preceding the crash the early examples of "irrational exhuberance" as Alan Greenspan so aptly characterized it:

Optimism and Prosperity

When Americans elected Herbert Hoover President in 1928, the mood of the general public was one of optimism and confidence in the United States economy. Most people believed that national prosperity would continue indefinitely. In his acceptance speech for the Republican party nomination for the presidency, Hoover had said:

"We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. The poorhouse is vanishing from among us."

Hoover was a very bright and able leader. But unfortunately, what he knew about economics left him mis-prepared for what was coming. Unemployment went from 3.2%, it's all-time low, to 9% in 1930, then 16% in 1932, and 24.6% by 1934 subsequently in the midst of the onslaught of the Great Depression, and a third of the population was officially under the poverty line, and a third were forced to file for bankruptcy.

People today who weren't there universally think it can't possibly happen again. Talk to those were there. They aren't so confident in these magical repeals of the laws of economics.

The survivors of the Great Depression typically display a great deal of personal frugality and are often scandalized by the progressively increasing waste of each of the succeeding generations that have followed them.

You might consider that Bush has adopted the FDR receipe of priming the economy with deficit government dollars. FDR filled the job needs that private industry did not provide. FDR was doing OK until the Commies took him over.

I see it the same way, I tend to be more sympathetic to FDR than most Freepers would be. I'll explain as I go on below

Some history. "The Great Depression brought about severe economic hardships in America and around the world. People were opportunistic, wanting any type of advantage that could be given to them. One such group of people were the World War I veterans and their families; who wanted a bonus for their services in the Great War now, instead of in 1945. During this turbulent time, the United States government was very concerned with political uprisings that tried to overthrow the government. The government's great concern about riots and political uprisings during the Great Depression led to hasty actions to quell the Bonus March demonstrations, created animosity towards President Hoover, and eventually forced him out of office."

That's it in an nutshell. I think FDR did a lot of good, some of what he did, perhaps not, but he had a lot of problems tossed into his lap and they had to be dealt with, they needed answers. In times of crisis, you have to show inititative and strength be trying to do something. Sometimes you do the right thing, sometimes you do the wrong thing but the important thing to show is leadership and the ability to come up with plans, ideas and get them rolling. If you sit by and do nothing, that shows weakness and the inability to make decisions. I know had Hoover managed to win, he most likely would have had to implement his own version of the New Deal, sure it might have been somewhat different from FDR's ideas, but he would have had to act and be the leader to do something.

We had a very good chance of degrading into a fascist or communist dictatorship at that time. Between those two and what FDR did, I would choose FDR as the lesser of the evils and/or the best of the three choices we had.

Actually it was a war that ended the Great Depression.

I think eventually we would have crawled out of the Depression with FDr's ideas although I do agree with you that it was World War II that truly ended it along with everyone getting blown up during the war except us. Had the damage to the rest of the world were less or non-existant, the 1945 to 1975 prosperity might not have happened.