Edward Johnson Slams FDR,‘New Deal II’

Fidelity’s Edward “Ned” Johnson jumped into the controversial debate over President Obama’s “New Deal II” and what Johnson called government “make-work projects.”

Without naming names, Johnson praised the administration’s effort to make economic recovery its top priority, saying it was “admirable.”

But Johnson, sounding like he’s never been a big fan of the original New Dealers from the 1930s, warned of too much government involvement in the economy and indicated Fidelity is beefing up its government-affairs unit to fend off possibly burdensome new regulations.

“We can only hope that the government’s cure doesn’t further sicken the patient,” Johnson wrote in his annual update on Fidelity’s performance over the past year.

“During the ’30s, Congress - with guidance from the president and the same kind of good intentions - shifted the country’s cash flow away from productive businesses to government make-work projects, which most likely prolonged the Great Depression,” wrote Johnson, arguably Boston’s most powerful business executive.

Is it the link or is it me?
Without going to the link..
REPLY:
“I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot!”
Surely this must be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or another leading Democrat denouncing President Bush’s economic policies.
Wrong. Wrong. And wrong again.
The words are those of none other than Henry Morgenthau Jr. — close friend, lunch companion, loyal secretary of the Treasury to President Franklin D. Roosevelt — and key architect of FDR’s New Deal.
The date: May 9, 1939. The setting: Morgenthau’s appearance in Washington before less influential Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee.
Morgenthau made this “startling confession,” as historian Burton W. Folsom Jr. calls it, during the seventh year of FDR’s New Deal programs to combat the rampant unemployment of the Great Depression.

“In these words, Morgenthau summarized a decade of disaster, especially during the years Roosevelt was in power. Indeed average unemployment for the whole year in 1939 would be higher than that in 1931, the year before Roosevelt captured the presidency from Herbert Hoover,” Folsom writes in his new book, “New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America.”....The New Deal was failed public policy. Massive spending on public works programs didn’t erase historic unemployment. It didn’t produce a recovery."

The war saved the economy.

Courtesy of Open secrets.org - yes it is Obamas contributors just in the past year

University of California $1,201,178
Goldman Sachs $955,473
Microsoft Corp $798,049
Harvard University $789,560
Google Inc $782,964
Citigroup Inc $653,468
JPMorgan Chase & Co $646,058
Stanford University $568,566
Sidley Austin LLP $565,788
Time Warner $544,601
National Amusements Inc $541,285
Wilmerhale Llp $524,292
IBM Corp $515,249
UBS AG $513,919
Skadden, Arps et al $505,774
Columbia University $503,566
Morgan Stanley $485,823
US Government $479,306
Latham & Watkins $461,511
University of Chicago $457,735

“David Mitchell of the Cato Institute said Johnson's remarks were on the “right path”, though he said they might be “kind of risky” if they anger any government policymakers.”

Have we reached the point where the head of one of the biggest brokerage firms in the country cannot comment on how he believes this whole mess was started and being perpetuated without risk of angering policymakers?????

What a world, what a world.

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