Now that he’s an official U.S. Senate candidate, Terrence Wall should really brush up on some basic American history, seeing as how he seems to think Franklin D. Rooseveltwas responsible for the Great Depression, despite the fact that most historians agree the Great Depression started with the sudden and total collapse of US stock market prices on October 29th, 1929, a day also known as Black Tuesday.
Here’s what T. Wall had to say about FDR’s role in causing the Great Depression:
The same holds true when FDR was President with his own party in control of Congress. The Great Depression wasn’t an accident; what would have been a bad recession was turned into the Great Depression by massive federal taxation and regulation, increased trade barriers, and huge reductions in economic liberty, thereby scaring off investor capital and risk taking.
While he was busy blaming FDR and Democrats for causing the Great Depression, T. Wall forgot one important point: FDR didn’t take office as President of the United States until March 4, 1933, just under four full years after the Great Depression started. In fact, it was a Republican, Herbert Hoover, who was president during the first 3+ years of the Great Depression, a fact T. Wall seems blissfully unaware of.
I’m just spit-balling, but shouldn’t someone who wants to be a United States Senator have a basic understanding of U.S. history? After all, even my fifth grader knows who the president was when the Great Depression started.
H/T to One Wisconsin Now.
Zach:
Here are a couple of spit-balls of my own. I don’t read Terrance Wall, and I’m not defending him, however, here are a couple of my “favorites” from the President of the United States. It seems sensitivity training and Geography 101 may be in order:
“No, no. I have been practicing…I bowled a 129. It’s like — it was like Special Olympics, or something.”
“It’s wonderful to be back in Oregon, over the past 15-months we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii.”
Fred…. Please…. That’s off limits because Obama isn’t running for office in Wisconsin and your pointing out silly inacurate things liberals say would provide proof of hypocrisy.
C’mon Zach… Is this what you guys call “dirt”????? Surely you can make up better stuff than this.
That is one of the most simply incorrect things that Wall has written.
The Great Depression was a product of the capitalist system, and was generated partially by the end of World War I. The U.S. was a major financier of the war for European states, and their struggle to recover from the war was painful, to say the least. Germany, once Europe’s greatest industrial power, was buckling under the debt of the Versailles Treaty that was imposed by France and England.
The stock market crash of 1929 pushed many banks past their breaking point, causing many interconnected systems of capital and credit to fail. That is very similar to the recent economic crash, 2007-2009. The rolling out of massive stimulus funds (TARP, et. al.) will be debated until the sun goes out, but looking at what happened in 1929, I think it may have helped to prevent a deeper depression from taking hold.
@Fred-
Don’t forget George Bush, the Yogi Berra of politics… he’s got a million of ’em:
“Oh, no, we’re not going to have any casualties.” –discussing the Iraq war with Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson in 2003, as quoted by Robertson
“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.” –Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005
“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” –speaking underneath a “Mission Accomplished” banner aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, May 1, 2003
“In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession.” –George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 12, 2009
“Should the Iranian regime-do they have the sovereign right to have civilian nuclear power? So, like, if I were you, that’s what I’d ask me. And the answer is, yes, they do.” –George W. Bush, talking to reporters in Washington, D.C., July 2, 2008
“I’ll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.” –George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008
“Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere!” –joking about his administration’s failure to find WMDs in Iraq as he narrated a comic slideshow during the Radio & TV Correspondents’ Association dinner, Washington, D.C., March 24, 2004
“You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that.” –to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005
Sorry Dave….. You can’t invoke Bush here. He’s not running for office in Wisconsin.
Sorry. Usually when one invokes Bush, hilarity ensues.
I’ll be more serious next time. 😐
My apologies.
E, I just love how you can’t seem to focus on the topic at hand.
We’re talking about Terrence Wall here….not the Kennedys, not George W. Bush, and not Barack Obama.
Anyone that claims that the great depression is “basic history” plainly does not understand it.
The causes of the great depression can hardly be considered simple and are certainly greater than one individual Herbert of F.D.R.
Heck, Wiki has an article devoted to the disputes over its cause:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_Great_Depression
Zach’s attempt to attribute the depression to Hoover is overly simplistic.
Most people now attribute the start of the great depression to the 1929 stock marke crash. However, they overlook that optimism remained after the crash, the market registered gains in the first part of 1930 and made back 70% of the losses. The bank failures and financial devestation did not begin until after the severe drought during the summer of 1930 and consumer’s significant cut back on spending.
In any event, Wall’s statement has a basis in fact. Remember F.D.R. ran on a platform of balanced budgets and economic non-intervention. Yet when he was elected into office he promptly began expanding Hoover’s spending programs. And that spending worked to stimulate the economy–at first. However, by May 1937 the eocnomoy took another nose dive which lasted until June of 1938. At which time the economy held steady but did not show much improvement until the war spending went into gear in 1941.
Super, I didn’t attempt to attribute the Great Depression to Herbert Hoover; I simply pointed out Hoover was president when the Great Depression began.
That’s what I said, nothing more, nothing less.
Zach,
The great depression did not start as “The Great Depression.” Obviously, you have to go through A to get to B.
The most commonly held view places the precipitating event, as the 1929 stock market crash. But when did the stock market crash become an ecnomic downturn, the economic downturn become a recession, the recession a derpression, and the depression become the “Great Depresion”?
To that end, Wall’s point apepars to be that the chain that lead to the great depression would have been cut before it became a depression without some of the measure F.D.R. took.
You can take issue with Wall’s assertion that F.D.R.’s actions caused a bad recession to become the great depression on the merits of that statement. But your criticism of Wall’s statement on the basis of who was President at the time of the 29 crash misses the substance of Wall’s argument rather badly.
I’m just trying to keep the comments in line here Zach. When someone brings up a relevant comparo they need to be smacked down so they don’t expose any hypocrisy. I personally don’t have anything to add here because your being a bit nit picky and superficial in your arguments against Wall. I’m waiting for some real substance here!!!