Free Republic

Barack Obama has been compared to almost every American President of the last hundred years--favorably to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan; and unfavorably to Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. I want to put another name in the hat: Herbert Hoover. It might seem ludicrous, or unfair, to compare Obama to one of the most vilified presidents of the last century, but that’s because Hoover’s reputation is largely, or at least somewhat, undeserved--the product of Democratic attacks and Hoover’s own strident responses to these attacks. To his contemporaries, Hoover had been the American most suited to be...

How Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke are destroying the dollar — and perhaps ushering in the amero First under the Bush Administration and even more so under President Obama, the federal government has been seizing power and spending money as it hasn’t done since World War II. But as bold as the Executive Branch has been during this financial crisis, the innovations of Fed chairman Ben Bernanke have been literally unprecedented. Indeed, it is entirely plausible that before Obama leaves office, Americans will be using a new currency. Bush and Obama have engaged in record peacetime deficit spending; so too...

... The Great Depression was caused by misguided government policies adopted to avoid the "unsatisfactory conditions" signaled by the crash. The run-of-the-mill recession that ought to have followed the crash was magnified by the policies of the federal government during the administration of Herbert Hoover. In a paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research published last August, Lee E. Ohanian examines a continuing mistake during the Hoover administration that helped transform difficulty into calamity. An economics professor at UCLA, Ohanian has written numerous papers on the Depression. In one earlier paper, he pinned the persistence of high unemployment on...

A great and dangerous myth exists that Herbert Hoover was a do nothing president and that his laissez faire attitude toward the economy resulted in the prolonging of the Great Depression. The myth continues that it was the activist policies of Franklin Roosevelt that finally turned the economy around. This myth is so prevalent that the current President, in his inaugural address, touched on the myth as a source of inspiration during the current downturn. "[We] saw a nation [during the FDR era] conquer fear itself, and a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we...

Who killed the U.S. auto industry? To hear the media tell it, arrogant corporate chiefs failed to foresee the demand for small, fuel-efficient cars and made gas-guzzling road-hog SUVs no one wanted, while the clever, far-sighted Japanese, Germans and Koreans prepared and built for the future. I dissent. What killed Detroit was Washington, the government of the United States, politicians, journalists and muckrakers who have long harbored a deep animus against the manufacturing class that ran the smokestack industries that won World War II. As far back as the 1950s, an intellectual elite that produces mostly methane had its knives...

"That man has offered me unsolicited advice for six years, all of it bad." So said President Calvin Coolidge of Herbert Hoover, his Republican successor. Coolidge derided Hoover as "Wonderboy," according to biographer Robert Sobel, "because he always seemed to want to change things." Silent Cal, who presided over a legendary golden age of economic growth that featured unemployment levels dropped to the two's and one percent range, had a dim view of what he saw as Hoover's propensity for intervention in all manner of things, including the economy. Coolidge died two months before the 1933 inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt,...

As everyone knows the Wall Street crash of 1929 ushered in a period of profound and unprecedented hardship for the American people. Then president of the United States, Herbert Hoover fought valiantly to keep the government from wading into the financial crisis tried in vain to let the markets self-correct. For his efforts, Hoover was castigated as a do-nothing president, a failed leader, a man who allowed his nation to wither for the sake of ideological purity and a lack of compassion. Unemployment soared, commerce ground to a halt, and thousands of Americans found themselves waiting in soup lines and...

By Herb Denenberg, The Bulletin 09/23/2008 We've all met Barack "Neville Chamberlain" Obama and Barack "Rev. God Damn America" Obama, so now let me introduce you to a third face: Barack "Herbert Hoover" Obama. Just as Sen. Obama learned nothing from Chamberlain and his talks with Hitler, and so proposes to talk without preconditions to Amadinejad, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and the rest of the axis of evil, by like token, he's learned nothing from the lessons of Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. Hoover was long the great nemesis of the Democratic Party, but that was perhaps before Sen....

It seems like a no-brainer: Raising taxes is bad. It's a shame that Barron's is one of the few outlets to pick up on it. An economic plan floated out by Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, Ill., would raise taxes on incomes above $250,000 - with the highest rate at 39.6 percent - and redistribute the wealth to the poor and middle-class. But that would be a big mistake, according to an article by Jim McTague in the August 25 issue of Barron's. "It's almost as if Obama wants to repeat the mistakes of Herbert Hoover," McTague wrote. "During...

What I Found in Mr. Hoover's Papers By Robert Service Herbert Hoover understood that history is to be discovered not just in official documents but in the little details of the past. By Robert Service. Herbert Hoover had several careers of importance long before he became U.S. president. His exceptional ability as mining engineer, investor, and food-relief administrator is well attested to and widely known. He had a vision of a peaceful world where people could live in freedom from oppression and material want, and he understood better than any contemporary that, if that better world were going to be...

With Eliot Spitzer gone, Chuck Schumer moves to the head of the list of self-righteously bloviating New York pols. So it was particularly satisfying to see Sen. Jon Kyl [R-AZ] put Schumer is his place on today's This Week. A guest with Kyl for purposes of discussing the economy, Schumer clearly came in with a game plan: to analogize President Bush to the man who presided over the beginning of the Great Depression: Herbert Hoover. After he tried it twice, Kyl had had enough and unleashed a riposte that was as reasoned as it was devastating.

It's questionable whether Herbert Hoover ever really promised to put "a chicken in every pot." But even if Hoover did, he was a mere piker compared to Hillary Clinton. She's not just going to pick up the check. No, vote for Clinton and she'll personally provide for all your needs. Check out her remarks in a campaign spot today, as aired on this afternoon's Hardball. HILLARY CLINTON: Over the years, you've heard plenty of promises, from plenty of people in plenty of speeches. And some of those speeches were probably pretty good. But speeches don't put food on the table....

Herbert Hoover and Media by: Jeremy Hempel, February 04, 2008 President Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) had some encouraging words for discouraged citizens plagued by today’s one-sided approach to media. A Republican who rose from son of a blacksmith to become the president of the Unites States, his administration faced the Great Depression. The former president warned of the dangers that a mass communication system controlled by one way of thinking would sway the nation into “untruth”. The 31st president wrote to the book The Challenge to Liberty in 1934 saying: “Bureaucracy has already developed a vast ramifying propaganda subtly designed to...

Are foreign countries and companies using the "Wal-Mart model" to undermine American industry? US economic incentives and trade policies encourage foreign producers to invest in this country. While the nation may be experiencing short-term benefits from foreign investment, the long-term harm may far exceed expectations, as is the case when Wal-Mart has invested in some local communities. Undermining American Industry The result of these US economic incentive and trade policies seems to be dramatic erosion of American industry through predatory competition and utilization of cheap overseas suppliers, analogous to the displacement of many local merchants that sometimes follows the introduction...

Sheep's clothing and Adam Smith -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: March 13, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Vox Day -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com How does one resolve the question of the presumably cataclysmic meeting between the hitherto immovable rock and the historically unstoppable force? Perhaps by reversing the logic of the famous question: "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" Is the rock truly immovable? Or, alternatively, is the force actually unstoppable? I mention this because I have long been a vocal advocate of free trade. I was raised on Adam Smith, inoculated against the usual collegiate flirtation with...

WASHINGTON - Job growth slowed in December - following a big hiring spurt in November - with US employers expanding payrolls by just 108,000, underscoring the sometimes choppy path travelled by job seekers. The Labour Department's fresh snapshot of the nation's jobs climate, released on Friday, also showed that the unemployment rate dipped from 5 per cent in November to 4.9 per cent in December, as some people left the labour market for any number of reasons. The 108,000 gain in payrolls registered in December followed a big pickup of 305,000 jobs added in November, according to revised figures released...

The number of U.S. workers seeking new jobless benefits fell last week to its lowest in over five years, the government reported on Thursday and a private group said the services sector grew last month, boding well for the economic outlook. The strong data came one day before the closely watched Labor Department report on employment. Economists expect a solid 200,000 gain in nonfarm payrolls in December, with the jobless rate holding steady at 5 percent. In other data, major U.S. retailers on Thursday reported that deep discounts lured holiday shoppers last month and pushed sales slightly ahead of modest...

Manteo Booksellers' Annual Herbert Hoover Celebration Each year, on August 10th, we celebrate the birthday of the man who loved poetry, dogs and fishing (not necessarily in that order). We have a fun-filled author event, live musical entertainment, Happy Birthday Herbie cakes, our world-famous "Herbert Sherbert" punch, Herbie trivia contest (all the answers are available in the Herbert Hoover fun facts posted throughout the bookshop on his birthday) and our own Herbie shrine loaded with Herbert Hoover memorabilia and our private collection of Hoover books for guests to peruse

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. posted a smaller than expected $52.79 billion budget deficit in July as revenues swelled, a Treasury Department report showed on Wednesday. Wall Street analysts had expected the government to post a $57 billion budget gap in July, following a $69.16 billion deficit in the same month in 2004. In its monthly budget statement, the Treasury Department said government receipts rose to $142.09 billion in July -- a record high for the month -- compared to $134.42 billion in July last year. Outlays fell to $194.88 billion from $203.58 billion in July 2004. For the fiscal...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Salvation Army will open an anchor store with 30,000 square feet of retail space in the former Service Merchandise building on Kidder Street, Wilkes-Barre. When the store opens this fall, it will replace the non-profit organization's 15,000 square foot location on business Route 309, Wilkes-Barre Township, said Jerry Balara, general manager of Salvation Army's adult rehabilitation center. "We expect to get to the point where we can double our sales at that location," Balara said. "Once the store becomes established, given the fact it is twice the size, we expect the...