The Wrecking Ball

...is FDR's catch phrase, "bold, persistent, experimentation."

Watching Obama, Bush, Paulson, Dodd, Frank, Pelosi, Bernanke, and Geithner wreck the United States is pretty painful. But at least 500M Americans haven't lost their jobs. We are now in the jaws of the worst depression our country has known, worse than the 1830s, worse than the 1930s. What lessons can we learn from those events?

Andrew Jackson conquered the 1830s depression with a model for the ages. He personally executed the central bank in town square. The end result was so positive that the Industrial Revolution burst forth. Ding, dong, the Wicked Witch was dead. Industrialized post-Jackson America was the only modern nation without a central bank pilfering its national treasure, we quickly became the wealthiest nation on earth.

In 1932, life still seemed normal, though prices had become depressed. That illusion did not last. FDR, who unlike Jackson was a dupe of the latest reincarnation of the king's bank, the Federal Reserve, accidentally (or intentionality) destroyed America on their behalf. The next 20 years were hell on Earth. What happened?

FDR's greatest mistake wasn't toilet-flushing some $500B on wantonly wasteful New Deal programs, directly aimed at enriching the world's wealthiest bankers. No, at least people could plan for the swindling of our innocent children.

FDR's greatest mistake was something much simpler, it should sound familiar to all of us: arbitrarily changing the rules of American capitalism, almost daily. Businesses were left with no choice but to give up on feasible profit. Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man, once put it this way,

The New Deal centerpiece, the National Recovery Administration, helped some businesses compete and criminalized others for the same behavior. Sometimes Roosevelt goaded federal prosecutors into harassing corporate executives. Other times, he schmoozed the same execs at the White House. In 1936, FDR pushed through deficit spending. In 1937, he was Mr. Budget Hawk.

FDR freely admitted that he had no earthly idea what he was doing. Shlaes relays a story from Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, who in November of 1933 asked Roosevelt why he decided to raise the price of gold by 21 cents that Friday? FDR replied, "Because it is three times seven."

Is it any wonder FDR ruined the world economy and plunged our nation into war? The untimely slaughter of nearly 100M people should be a lesson to us that bold, persistent, experimentation is no joke--but so far, no dice.