posted October 24, 2012 07:20 PM            

Jonathan Thompson | Oct 24, 2012 05:00 AM

He’s a rich, conservative Republican businessman, and the scion of a powerful Mormon family. And four years into a devastating economic crisis, he has come to Washington, D.C., amid cries to balance the budget, to offer a solution.

Mitt Romney? Nope. It’s Marriner S. Eccles. The year was 1933, and the U.S. Senate Finance Committee had invited 46 citizens from various walks of life to testify about ways to slow the downward economic spiral. Eccles, a business owner and banker from Utah, was one of the witnesses, and he had some pretty provocative ideas. In the Oct. 29 edition of High Country News, I write about Eccles’ place in a long history of quasi-socialist collectivism in the Church of Latter-day Saints. But Eccles is more than just a historic figure. His theories resonate just as loudly today as they did eight decades ago.

At that 1933 hearing, most of the witnesses spoke in a moralistic tone, suggesting that it was extravagance, nature or God that had caused the problems. And many of the witnesses seemed to be there to bolster the conventional wisdom, that the only way out of the mess was to balance the federal budget.

Eccles, however, shook things up. He had long believed that hard work and thrift were all a person -- and the economy as a whole -- needed to be successful. His father, David Eccles, had built up an empire on those principles, most famously owning the Utah Construction Company, one of six firms that built Hoover Dam and the largest company of its kind in the nation. The senior Eccles died in 1912, leaving everything to his children from two wives, one in Logan, one in Ogden. Though Marriner was in the lesser-endowed Logan branch, he ended up in Ogden, rose to the top of the bunch with his business acumen, and became President of Utah Construction Company, First Security Corporation and several other interests. Then the Depression hit. Though Eccles’ wealth insulated him and his businesses, he noticed all around him people who had toiled and saved their whole lives, and who were now ruined, unemployed, even homeless.

“It is a national disgrace that such suffering should be permitted in this, the wealthiest country in the world,” he said. “The present condition is not the fault of the unemployed, but that of our business, financial, and political leadership.”

Eccles told the lawmakers that it was neither extravagance nor God nor nature that had caused the slump, but maldistribution of wealth. There was plenty of money out there, it had just all ended up in the hands of a small group of the ultra-rich -- the 1 percent, if you will -- leaving the other 99 percent broke. That left the bulk of Americans not only hungry, but also without any of the purchasing power necessary to fuel the economy, and that’s what led to the crash.

The numbers back up Eccles’ theory. Emmanuel Saez, a Berkeley economist, has done a great deal of work on the topic of income inequality, and is credited with being the inspiration for the 99 vs. 1 percent meme that arose after the 2008 crash. He and Thomas Pikkety charted the amount of the nation’s wealth held by the top 1 percent since 1917. Here’s their chart, which shows that, indeed, wealth was ridiculously maldistributed just before the 1929 crash, an inequality not matched until, yes, 2008, just before the most recent crash, when the 1 percent had accumulated nearly 25 percent of all the wealth.

“I see no way of correcting this situation except through Government action,” said Eccles. And balancing the budget is not what he was talking about. He was talking about redistributing the wealth. His five point plan had the federal government allocating another $500 million toward relief for the unemployed and the hungry, and another $2.5 billion stimulus package for public works-type construction to create jobs and build infrastructure. How to pay for it? Raise taxes on the rich, said Eccles, a multimillionaire.

The approach was both compassionate and coldly rational. It would feed the hungry with direct handouts. And it would push a little bit of the wealth back into the hands of the working class, restoring the purchasing power of the masses. That, in turn, would revive consumption and jump-start industry, creating more jobs and more wealth. For as Eccles often said, “Labor is our only source of wealth.” Meanwhile, it would bolster the infrastructure of the nation, providing a foundation for future economic growth.

Trickle down economics simply wouldn’t work. “We now see, after nearly four years of depression, that private capital will not go into public works or self-liquidating projects except through government and that if we leave our ‘rugged individual’ to follow his own interest under these conditions he does precisely the wrong thing. Each corporation for its own protection discharges men, reduces pay rolls, curtails its orders for raw materials...” The federal government needed to step up, stimulate the economy and keep the “rugged individualist” corporations in line with stronger regulations.

From the transcripts, it’s difficult to tell what the senators listening to Eccles thought of his approach. However, his ideas resemble those laid out by John Maynard Keynes in his 1936 work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, which is the basis for one of the principal schools of modern economic thought (most scholars believe that Keynes and Eccles developed their theories independently of one another). We do know that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was impressed. He appointed Eccles to be an assistant secretary in his Treasury Department, and then Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Eccles’ ideas helped form the foundation of the New Deal, which helped redistribute the wealth (along with World War II) and set the United States on a prosperous path that lasted for several decades. In 1931, the top tax rate on the richest Americans was 25 percent. By the time FDR died, it was 94 percent, and millionaires continued to be taxed at a rate of at least 70 percent for another four decades. In the 1980s, Eccles was apparently forgotten, tax rates for the wealthy plummeted so that today, the one percent pays, at the very most, 35 percent (but in most cases its much less than that -- Mitt Romney paid just 14 percent on nearly $14 million in income). Wealth has been redistributed back to the one percent. The working class, and the economy, have suffered.

During these tough times, a voice like Marriner S. Eccles’ is sorely needed.

Image credits: Graph by Pikkety and Saez, with historic marker additions by Jonathan Thompson. Photo of Marriner Eccles from the Library of Congress, in the public domain.

posted October 25, 2012 12:31 AM            

After all that "government action" by the Roosevelt administration..from 1933 to 1939, there was nothing to show for all the taxing the rich schemes, controlling businesses through government regulations, government spending up the wazoo and all the other Roosevelt bullshiiit.

In 1939 Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau had this to say before the Ways and Means Committee of the US House of Representatives in May of 1939.

"We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. 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."

So, we've seen the O'Bomber horseshiiit of government spending your way out of unemployment, government spending your way to private sector growth and government spending to prosperity before. And like I told you and other usual suspects IT JUST DOESN'T WORK. It didn't work for the Roosevelt administration, it didn't work for the Japanese, it's not worked for O'Bomber...and it won't work. It's Socialist Keynesian economic horseshiiit. It prolonged the Great Depression for years. It lost the economy of Japan a decade of stumbling from one economic crisis to the next.."The Lost Decade" and after 4 years of O'Bomber's mismanagement, we would have been far better off to have done nothing whatsoever than where we are today. In fact, that's what O'Bomber was told...that in the long term we would be better off to do nothing about the recession...from the government side...and let the recession run it's normal course in the "business cycle".

I know you thought you were being "cute" posting a story about a Mormon who disagreed with Romney acoustic. But, that Mormon was wrong and the proof of his error is the prolonged Depression under Roosevelt which only ended with the start of WWII when industry geared up for war and millions of Americans went back to work to support the war effort. First to supply the British, later to supply the Soviet Union and still later to make the ships, planes, tanks, jeeps, guns and ammo to supply the US military when the US entered the war.

posted October 25, 2012 01:03 PM            

Jwhop, your analysis is as off as ever. That's nice that you see my post as cute. You know how I found the article? I have a standing search on Google for, "How to wealthy." It comes up with all kinds of interesting stuff. It kind of disappoints me that they're mostly concerned with the third word, and not the first two, but I'll take it. I suppose it's nice to get news on the wealthy.

posted October 25, 2012 02:16 PM            

But, because you don't actually know much about anything, you didn't know your Mormon's advice to Roosevelt didn't work, didn't know that 8 years into Roosevelt's Keynesian Socialist economic stupidity the economy hadn't improved and didn't know that Roosevelt's own Treasury Secretary so testified to the Ways and Means Committee of the US House of Representatives.

Your ignorance doesn't permit you to understand O'Bomber is trying to go down the very same road, the road to nowhere economically and it won't work, it never works and never has worked.

The Keynesian Socialist economic horseshiit leads to only one outcome when it's tried. A stalled and/or declining economy, little to no improvement in unemployment and crushing national debt due to massive government overspending.

Welcome to the O'Bomber economy.

posted October 25, 2012 02:27 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by jwhop:
I don't give a rat's ass how you found the article. Your motives in posting the article are clear. Find someone who disagrees with Romney and agrees with O'Bomber. The Mormon angle was just an extra added bonus for you.

But, because you don't actually know much about anything, you didn't know your Mormon's advice to Roosevelt didn't work, didn't know that 8 years into Roosevelt's Keynesian Socialist economic stupidity the economy hadn't improved and didn't know that Roosevelt's own Treasury Secretary so testified to the Ways and Means Committee of the US House of Representatives.

Your ignorance doesn't permit you to understand O'Bomber is trying to go down the very same road, the road to nowhere economically and it won't work, it never works and never has worked.

The Keynesian Socialist economic horseshiit leads to only one outcome when it's tried. A stalled and/or declining economy, little to no improvement in unemployment and crushing national debt due to massive government overspending.

Welcome to the O'Bomber economy.

Now acoustic, strike the word analysis from your vocabulary. You're clueless about analysis and it's unseemly for someone who knows nothing about the subject to talk about it.

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Could not have said this better

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Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal

posted October 25, 2012 02:50 PM            

quote:

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But, because you don't actually know much about anything ~jwhop

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That was a personal attack, Ami. That's nice of you to like it. Too bad you didn't say it too, eh?

posted October 25, 2012 03:22 PM            

quote:

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you didn't know your Mormon's advice to Roosevelt didn't work, didn't know that 8 years into Roosevelt's Keynesian Socialist economic stupidity the economy hadn't improved and didn't know that Roosevelt's own Treasury Secretary so testified to the Ways and Means Committee of the US House of Representatives.

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You found someone to voice the narrative you hoped to hear. Good for you. Do I care about that one person's opinion? Do I think that single opinion is right overall? Do I believe Roosevelt was a failure in his first eight years? Considering that he had 12 overall, no I don't. Also, considering that Republicans now defend his major social program, I don't view his accomplishments as insignificant either. You can keep the narrative you like.

The larger context shows that things were fine under Roosevelt. 1933 - 1939 saw the GDP rise by 60%. The number of unemployed fell from 15 million to 9.2 million in the same time period. He measurably gave confidence to the economy making your quote seem rather nonsensical.

And the bit about "Keynesian Socialist" bit is nonsense considering that this was a Republican. This illustrates quite well the transformation that's taken place in the Republican party since those times.

quote:

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Now acoustic, strike the word analysis from your vocabulary. You're clueless about analysis and it's unseemly for someone who knows nothing about the subject to talk about it.

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Yeah, it's me that has the trouble with analysis.

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Could not have said this better

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posted October 25, 2012 03:30 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by jwhop:
I don't give a rat's ass how you found the article. Your motives in posting the article are clear. Find someone who disagrees with Romney and agrees with O'Bomber. The Mormon angle was just an extra added bonus for you.

But, because you don't actually know much about anything, you didn't know your Mormon's advice to Roosevelt didn't work, didn't know that 8 years into Roosevelt's Keynesian Socialist economic stupidity the economy hadn't improved and didn't know that Roosevelt's own Treasury Secretary so testified to the Ways and Means Committee of the US House of Representatives.

Your ignorance doesn't permit you to understand O'Bomber is trying to go down the very same road, the road to nowhere economically and it won't work, it never works and never has worked.

The Keynesian Socialist economic horseshiit leads to only one outcome when it's tried. A stalled and/or declining economy, little to no improvement in unemployment and crushing national debt due to massive government overspending.

Welcome to the O'Bomber economy.

Now acoustic, strike the word analysis from your vocabulary. You're clueless about analysis and it's unseemly for someone who knows nothing about the subject to talk about it.

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Juni, this post (and parts of the one prior by the same member) is riddled with personal attacks ripping into another member. I wonder if this an acceptable standard of communication? I realize this is GU ... even so, it makes me wince to read that points cannot be made without ripping into someone else.

Acoustic, sry I don't mean to come across like you can't defend your position. In fact I think you do a darn good job. I don't visit this forum much, but from what I've read of your posts, you put across your points without demeaning others and I respect that.

I like reading posts where information is just laid out in a civil manner w/o personal attacks and unnecessary editorializing. Posts containing personal attacks look unattractive, so even if they contain good information, I skip them.

posted October 25, 2012 06:52 PM            

Therefore, the rules do not apply. Just the way it is.

@Juni- you have class to spare. :_:

posted October 25, 2012 08:28 PM            

also a microcosm of the way politics have degenerated in this country (and elsewhere of course)

the funny thing about roosevelt's "failure" is it got him reelected three times. despite the witch hunters calling him a commie.

posted October 25, 2012 09:51 PM            

Randall, lemme ask you smth, if I may.
From your posts it's quite obvious you're a conservative. So how come you don't use verbal aggression to make your points in this forum? If you have to address a known democrat/liberal member, that is.

posted October 30, 2012 01:09 PM            

Hahaha, and what's your issue this time?

Poor babies, you're whining, moaning, wheezing, screeching and shrieking over the words bullshiiit and horseshiiit.

You hear worse from your own children...if you have children...and please assure me you don't have children and don't intend to have children.

You swooned in ecstasy when Bill Maher called Sarah Palin a "cu*t". So who in the hell do you think you're kidding with your phony outrage?

You leftists should never have started up with me those years ago. I'm more focused than you, more persistent than you and I'm going to stay right on your sorry butts and the sorry as$es of your little leftist icons until one of several circumstances occurs.

1. One by one, the last leftist here finds the switch to your brains and turns them on, abandoning your bovid and equine excrement.

2. The last leftist here assumes room temperature.

3. I assume room temperature. Don't hold your breath leftists. I feel fine. My doctor is stunned that I have the constitution of a 35 year old man. Tough luck leftists.

4. Randall says cease and desist. Unlike leftists, I have the utmost respect for the property rights of others. While leftists believe it's OK, even a virtue to steal what belongs to someone else for their own use, I don't.

That said usual suspects, please don't leave. With a radical Marxist moron twit in the White House, if you didn't already exist, it would be necessary to create you as a foil into which to stick the swords of logic, rationality and reason.

Neither would I want you to go silent. The more of your hypocrisy, irrationality, illogic, unreasonableness and misunderstanding..dare I say ignorance you reveal here, the more I like it. I'm for more speech here...for you, not less!

Take acoustic for instance. He's always behind the knowledge curve and therefore doomed to lose every encounter...except in his own mind.

So acoustic trots out a "supposed" republican from the Roosevelt era who embraced Keynesian Socialist economic policy and proposed it to Roosevelt who implemented it. The purpose acoustic had in mind was that this so called republican was also a Mormon...like Romney but embraced O'Bomber's Socialist Keynesian economic policy.

Big surprise here, Keynesian Socialist economic policy failed under Roosevelt and it's failed again under O'Bomber. This Socialist policy prolonged the Great Depression to the degree that the Treasury Secretary appeared before the House Ways and Means Committee years later and told them "it failed".

Here's the delicious part. acoustic thinks I went looking for something to oppose his article and found Henry Morgenthau and his quote from 1939:
"We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. 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."

But, I've known about Henry Morgenthau and what he said for more than 40 years. I have an excellent memory and only looked it up to get the quote exactly right. It's a classic and Morgenthau was a Roosevelt loyalist and he was Roosevelt's guy at Treasury for most of Roosevelt's administrations so he wasn't trying to stab Roosevelt in the back. Nor was Morgenthau telling House members something they didn't already know. He was merely stating facts.

But here's acoustic with his knowledge gap which he will never be able to fill asking others to disbelieve what Roosevelt's own Secretary of Treasury had to say about Roosevelt's Keynesian Socialist economic policies and instead, believe what some dumb-ass leftist moron and he says instead. It's delicious.

So stay usual suspects...and give acoustic all the help you can. He certainly needs it.

posted October 30, 2012 02:26 PM            

quote:

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You swooned in ecstasy when Bill Maher called Sarah Palin a "cu*t". So who in the hell do you think you're kidding with your phony outrage?

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You're one to talk about "phony outrage." If that's not the name of your game, I don't know what is.

quote:

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You leftists should never have started up with me those years ago. I'm more focused than you, more persistent than you and I'm going to stay right on your sorry butts and the sorry as$es of your little leftist icons until one of several circumstances occurs.

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You are NONE of these things. You're completely unfocused, especially where reality is concerned. I've easily outlasted you in every "epic" debate we've ever had. You're always the person to walk away. The only part of your statement that's true is that, yes, you do continue to have a vendetta against the Left. Your persistence in that area is noted. Meanwhile, everyone else is focused on keeping the realm of reality in the mix, so that no one inadvertently takes you for the authority you believe yourself to be.

quote:

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The more of your hypocrisy, irrationality, illogic, unreasonableness and misunderstanding..dare I say ignorance you reveal here, the more I like it. I'm for more speech here...for you, not less!

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Once again, ridiculous for the fact-challenged man to be saying.

quote:

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Big surprise here, Keynesian Socialist economic policy failed under Roosevelt

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It didn't. I already went over that. You are wrong on Roosevelt's efforts, and history records it as such. You think I have the gap in knowledge, and yet it's you that consistently remembers things wrong...like you just recently did with Clinton. Your problem is that you think your memory is infallible when you never interpretted the facts correctly in the first place.

posted October 30, 2012 03:03 PM            

Hahaha, image someone harebrained enough to argue with Roosevelt's own Treasury Secretary...who was there on the scene directing Roosevelt's Socialist Keynesian economic policies...as to whether it worked..or not. Hahaha, don't believe the guy who directed the policy, who lived with it night and day and lived with the consequences. Nope, believe acoustic!

Priceless but still bovid excrement.

posted October 30, 2012 03:11 PM            

quote:

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Hahaha, image someone harebrained enough to argue with Roosevelt's own Treasury Secretary...who was there on the scene directing Roosevelt's Socialist Keynesian economic policies...as to whether it worked..or not. Hahaha, don't believe the guy who directed the policy, who lived with it night and day and lived with the consequences. Nope, believe acoustic!

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posted October 31, 2012 12:17 PM            

It's a historical fact that Roosevelt's Keynesian Socialist economic policies utterly failed to end the Great Depression...even after 8 years. That's fact acoustic.

Hey acoustic, it's not even a big dark secret. Everyone alive in America at the time knew it. Every member of Congress knew it. Roosevelt's own Treasury Secretary readily admitted it.

It's also no secret Japan lost a decade, economically, following a similar policy. The "Lost Decade". No Secret.

It's also no secret O'Bomber is following a very similar policy and no secret it's been an utter failure after 4 years. If Henry Morgenthau were alive today, he'd be right in O'Bomber's face. He'd grab O'Bomber by his lapels, give him a good shake and say something like this...

"What the hell's wrong with you? You're supposed to learn from the mistakes of others. We blazed a trail of failure for you to learn from. We spent the US into near bankruptcy. We regulated businesses into near bankruptcy. We taxed businesses into bankruptcy or near bankruptcy. We expanded government, shrunk the private sector and narrowed the tax base. At the end of 8 years we had nothing to show for it but huge debt. Weren't you listening when I told the House Ways and Means Committee Keynesian Socialist economic policies don't work? You had successful economic models to follow. Remember Calvin Coolidge? Remember John Kennedy? Remember Ronald Reagan? Remember George W Bush? They all faced deep seated recessions and applied the correct fixes. You chose to copy failure. Only a fool refuses to learn from the mistakes of others. You don't deserve a second term."

posted October 31, 2012 01:14 PM            

quote:

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It's a historical fact that Roosevelt's Keynesian Socialist economic policies utterly failed to end the Great Depression...even after 8 years. That's fact acoustic.

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It's not a historical fact, Jwhop. Key metrics improved dramatically in just the first four years.

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Hey acoustic, it's not even a big dark secret. Everyone alive in America at the time knew it. Every member of Congress knew it. Roosevelt's own Treasury Secretary readily admitted it.

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Ok, supposing that were true, how in the hell did he manage to get elected three times? If someone were managing things that poorly, how did he manage this feat?

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It's also no secret O'Bomber is following a very similar policy and no secret it's been an utter failure after 4 years.

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You know you've been repeatedly challenged on which policies of Obama's have made things worse, and you've resorted to silence each time. You've tried disparaging the stimulus, but rational people know that the stimulus did help. Otherwise, there hasn't been anything Obama's done that to hurt the economy.

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They all faced deep seated recessions

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Nothing on the scale of the Great Recession.

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All your shucking and jiving is proof of how far you are behind in the knowledge curve.

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posted October 31, 2012 01:48 PM            

Well acoustic, the world was flat on it's back...but you wouldn't know that since you don't know much of anything.

Roosevelt was personally charming and people believed he really cared about them. Perhaps he really did. He was seen as punishing the rich...which he did.

But all that led to an extension of the Great Depression for more than 8 years and the fact Roosevelt got reelected has absolutely nothing to do with the depression. Most of the world was in the grip of depression at the time. You'd know that if you ever bothered to crack the pages of a book instead of sticking your nose up the butt of leftist morons trying to re-write history.

Once again, you show both a knowledge gap and an inability to analyze data.

The fact remains, Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary had it just right; Eccles/Roosevelt's Keynesian Socialist economic policies failed. Just as O'Bomber's Keynesian Socialist economic policies failed. Just as Keynesian Socialist economic policies always fail.

posted October 31, 2012 02:44 PM            

In EVERY election the economy is a big issue. It wasn't a matter of personality that won him the Presidency three times. As I noted previously, things improved within Roosevelt's first four years even as they continued to improve throughout his 12 years. The economy is never a non-issue in an election particularly when it's down.

posted November 01, 2012 12:08 AM            

Instead of flapping your gums about something you know nothing whatsoever about, you could have done a very simple search and at least gained some surface knowledge about the Great Depression. Not in depth knowledge to be sure but surface knowledge is better than total blind willful ignorance.

If you had done even a simple search, you would have found I was right...about everything single thing I said, including the reason Roosevelt got reelected. I was right about the depth of the depression. I was right about the controls Roosevelt put in place. I was right about the duration of the depression and I was right about WWII ending the depression. Roosevelt's economic policies DID NOT end the depression. Roosevelt's economic policies prolonged the depression.

One of your biggest mistakes is equating Roosevelt's reelection with the economy. The economy was terrible. Roosevelt had ordinary Americans on the public dole and others hired for temporary government projects. That took some of the sting out of being out of work in the private sector during the depression...as record numbers of Americans were and they gave Roosevelt credit for that. I told you people thought Roosevelt cared about them. But millions of families on the public dole or filling temporary government jobs is not a sign of a good economy, just the opposite.

You could have run a simple search..."History of the Great Depression". In the Yahoo search engine the very first entry is this...:

The Great Depression
By Jennifer Rosenberg, About.com Guide

Where you would have learned this...:

"The End of the Great Depression

To many at the time, President Roosevelt was a hero. They believed that he cared deeply for the common man and that he was doing his best to end the Great Depression. Looking back, however, it is uncertain as to how much Roosevelt's New Deal programs helped to end the Great Depression. By all accounts, the New Deal programs eased the hardships of the Great Depression; however, the U.S. economy was still extremely bad by the end of the 1930s.

The major turn-around for the U.S. economy occurred after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the entrance of the United States into World War II. Once the U.S. was involved in the war, both people and industry became essential to the war effort. Weapons, artillery, ships, and airplanes were needed quickly. Men were trained to become soldiers and the women were kept on the homefront to keep the factories going. Food needed to be grown for both the homefront and to send overseas.

It was ultimately the entrance of the U.S. into World War II that ended the Great Depression in the United States."
http://history1900s.about.com/od/1930s/p/greatdepression.htm

posted November 01, 2012 12:32 PM            

You say that I'd find everything you said was right...except it's not. You still haven't tackled the fact that Roosevelt's spending produced returns. The War did boost the economy into tremendous shape, sure. That wasn't a matter of dispute.

Gross National Product grew by $20 billion during his first term. Private investment in industry increased from $2 billion when he took office to $10 billion at the end of his first term. The number of unemployed people dropped by 5.8 million in his first four years.

His victory after four years was a landslide. That's a measure of what the people at the time thought of New Deal economic policy.