Re: Franklin Roosevelt’s Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau
Posted by WARREN MOSLER on February 10th, 2009
(email exchange)
Yes, then, like now, they were afraid of the numbers, and couldn’t see them in context of the size of the economy.
They were also concerned that ongoing deficits were needed to sustain output and employment, just like they are today.
Within a year after that deficit spending on the war shot up to over 20% of GDP and the Depression ended.
My guess is that we need deficits averaging about 4-5% of GDP to sustain output and employment. Some periods, like now, we need more, some, like the late 90′s during that credit boom, we needed far less.
>
> On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 10:05 AM, Mike wrote:
>
> Franklin Roosevelt’s own Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, lamented in
> an address to Congressional Democrats in May of 1939:
>
> ”We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever
> spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am
> wrong … somebody else can have my job. 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!”
>
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February 10th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Illegal immigrant: ‘I can’t make it here’ in the U.S.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/10/immigrants.economy/index.html
Pedro Pablo folds up his American flag blanket and stuffs it in his duffel bag. An illegal immigrant, Pablo couldn’t find work in the U.S. and decided to return home. “I left my family and lost four years with them. I will ask them to forgive me,” he said. More than 1 million illegal immigrants have left the U.S.
America’s economic boom during the 1990s and 2000s created a high demand of day workers needed for anything from building homes to picking fruit and from working at slaughterhouses to working as nannies. Many of those jobs have since evaporated, resulting in more and more people — immigrants and native-born Americans — flooding day labor job sites and standing on street corners in search of any type of work they can get.
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July 29th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
The Morgenthau quote is bogus – do the math professor: FDR was only in office for SIX years in 1939 not EIGHT. FDR took office in 1933. Other than the un-sourced quote in Folsom book, “New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America†the quote cannot be found.
Supposedly, Morganthau made the statement in a Congressional hearing May, 1939. A simple trip to a good library to review the Congressional Record reveals that he NEVER MADE THE STATEMENT.
Nice try.
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