Krugman opinion: "Yes, he could"

[Listening]

Not true. In terms of spending to GDP and spending to Debt, FDR percentually spent much, much more.

You do realize that $1,000,000 in 1933 was a helluva lot more money than today, right?


So, you can never do a 1:1 dollar to dollar comparison between economies from different eras, that never works. But the percentual analysis does.

Righties who do not understand this are absolute fools. Like you.

We come out of a recession eventually...in spite of the government.

There have been good cases made that FDR's meddling both deepened and extended the depression.

Good cases? Oh you mean right wing 'think tanks' rewriting history and leaving out that when FDR listened to the deficit scolds in 1937, and cut spending 10%, the US went back into the GOP great depression.....

I see you have the JKG Book of Fairy Tales. Keep at it. I like to laugh.

 

[Listening]

Which part of the term "compromise" do you need to have explained?

I don't need an explanation.

Obama, on the other hand........

Your posts say otherwise!

Please show me where I ask for explanations in my posts.

Or is this the blather of another self-righteous lefty self proclaimed know-it-all ?

 

[Statistikhengst]

More bullshit assertions from the newest ignoramus on board. Average UE during Roosevelt's time pre war was over 15%. His policies directly led to the recession becoming a full blown depression. He doubled down on the progressive Hoover's failed policies.

This is untrue; Hoover was not "progressive" by any standards.

No, Hoover was not a progressive, but an unusually talented man at the wrong pace at the wrong time. It is not disparaging FDR to say Hoover was twice the man he was, though altogether a less successful president. Few with an iota of history would argue.

Hoover was a terrible president, a terrible administrator and 100% inept when it came to economic decisions, but a pretty decent humanitarian and the first President to continue to have such a high public profile after leaving office (for more than 30 years).

 

[Derideo_Te]

I don't need an explanation.

Obama, on the other hand........

Your posts say otherwise!

Please show me where I ask for explanations in my posts.

Or is this the blather of another self-righteous lefty self proclaimed know-it-all ?

Your posts demonstrated that you didn't understand the term compromise hence the need to have it explained it to you.

 

[The Rabbi]

More bullshit assertions from the newest ignoramus on board. Average UE during Roosevelt's time pre war was over 15%. His policies directly led to the recession becoming a full blown depression. He doubled down on the progressive Hoover's failed policies.

This is untrue; Hoover was not "progressive" by any standards.

No, Hoover was not a progressive, but an unusually talented man at the wrong pace at the wrong time. It is not disparaging FDR to say Hoover was twice the man he was, though altogether a less successful president. Few with an iota of history would argue.

Yeah, you'er wrong. As usual.
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Herbert-Hoover-Joan-Hoff-Wilson/dp/0881337056]Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive: Joan Hoff Wilson, Oscar Handlin: 9780881337051: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]

 

[Dad2three]

We come out of a recession eventually...in spite of the government.

There have been good cases made that FDR's meddling both deepened and extended the depression.

Good cases? Oh you mean right wing 'think tanks' rewriting history and leaving out that when FDR listened to the deficit scolds in 1937, and cut spending 10%, the US went back into the GOP great depression.....

More bullshit assertions from the newest ignoramus on board. Average UE during Roosevelt's time pre war was over 15%. His policies directly led to the recession becoming a full blown depression. He doubled down on the progressive Hoover's failed policies.

Got it, MORE crap from the low life conservative. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you


I know, it wasn't the overproduction of the 20's, the 'markets will take care of themselves' of Harding/Coolidge that caused the GOP great recession, it was FDR and Hoover *shaking head*

Sorry Bubba, only the low informed types who buy into Ayn Rand's fiction believes AEI, CATO,etc rewriting of history

Stocks lost 90% of their value by the time FDR came into office, thousands of banks had failed and unemployment was over 24%, BUT it was FDR who caused it? lol

Sorry, my minor in history against you and your right wing garbage says YOU are full of it...

 

[Dad2three]

Good cases? Oh you mean right wing 'think tanks' rewriting history and leaving out that when FDR listened to the deficit scolds in 1937, and cut spending 10%, the US went back into the GOP great depression.....

More bullshit assertions from the newest ignoramus on board. Average UE during Roosevelt's time pre war was over 15%. His policies directly led to the recession becoming a full blown depression. He doubled down on the progressive Hoover's failed policies.

This is untrue; Hoover was not "progressive" by any standards.

According to the right wing mythology, yes, Hoover, and Dubya were both progressives, Reagan, the guy who increased revenues 11 times after his tax cuts for the rich, most liberal abortion policy as Guv of Cali, AMNESTY, the guy who funded then cut and ran from terrorists, HE was a true conservative....


You can't reason with people like the 'Rabbi'...

 

[Dad2three]

More bullshit assertions from the newest ignoramus on board. Average UE during Roosevelt's time pre war was over 15%. His policies directly led to the recession becoming a full blown depression. He doubled down on the progressive Hoover's failed policies.

This is untrue; Hoover was not "progressive" by any standards.

No, Hoover was not a progressive, but an unusually talented man at the wrong pace at the wrong time. It is not disparaging FDR to say Hoover was twice the man he was, though altogether a less successful president. Few with an iota of history would argue.

Except historians who CONSTANTLY place FDR in the top 3 for Prez's rankings...

 

[Dad2three]

We come out of a recession eventually...in spite of the government.

There have been good cases made that FDR's meddling both deepened and extended the depression.

Good cases? Oh you mean right wing 'think tanks' rewriting history and leaving out that when FDR listened to the deficit scolds in 1937, and cut spending 10%, the US went back into the GOP great depression.....

I see you have the JKG Book of Fairy Tales. Keep at it. I like to laugh.

So FDR didn't cut spending 10% in '37, listening to the GOP that took US back into a depression?

 

[The Rabbi]

Good cases? Oh you mean right wing 'think tanks' rewriting history and leaving out that when FDR listened to the deficit scolds in 1937, and cut spending 10%, the US went back into the GOP great depression.....

More bullshit assertions from the newest ignoramus on board. Average UE during Roosevelt's time pre war was over 15%. His policies directly led to the recession becoming a full blown depression. He doubled down on the progressive Hoover's failed policies.

Got it, MORE crap from the low life conservative. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you


I know, it wasn't the overproduction of the 20's, the 'markets will take care of themselves' of Harding/Coolidge that caused the GOP great recession, it was FDR and Hoover *shaking head*

Sorry Bubba, only the low informed types who buy into Ayn Rand's fiction believes AEI, CATO,etc rewriting of history

Stocks lost 90% of their value by the time FDR came into office, thousands of banks had failed and unemployment was over 24%, BUT it was FDR who caused it? lol

Sorry, my minor in history against you and your right wing garbage says YOU are full of it...

Yeah, the "overproduction"thesis was disproven eons ago. It doesnt even make economic sense. Not that you'd understand that, of course.

 

[HelenaHandbag]

Good cases? Oh you mean right wing 'think tanks' rewriting history and leaving out that when FDR listened to the deficit scolds in 1937, and cut spending 10%, the US went back into the GOP great depression.....

More bullshit assertions from the newest ignoramus on board. Average UE during Roosevelt's time pre war was over 15%. His policies directly led to the recession becoming a full blown depression. He doubled down on the progressive Hoover's failed policies.

Got it, MORE crap from the low life conservative. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you


I know, it wasn't the overproduction of the 20's, the 'markets will take care of themselves' of Harding/Coolidge that caused the GOP great recession, it was FDR and Hoover *shaking head*

Sorry Bubba, only the low informed types who buy into Ayn Rand's fiction believes AEI, CATO,etc rewriting of history

Stocks lost 90% of their value by the time FDR came into office, thousands of banks had failed and unemployment was over 24%, BUT it was FDR who caused it? lol

Sorry, my minor in history against you and your right wing garbage says YOU are full of it...

No, FDR's heavy-handed meddling in the marketplace escalated a disaster into a catastrophe.

The depression during the Harding/Coolidge administration lasted months. Like my bud Crusader Frank likes to say, the Great Depression lasted longer than the biblical seven lean years.

 

[Dad2three]

This is untrue; Hoover was not "progressive" by any standards.

No, Hoover was not a progressive, but an unusually talented man at the wrong pace at the wrong time. It is not disparaging FDR to say Hoover was twice the man he was, though altogether a less successful president. Few with an iota of history would argue.

Yeah, you'er wrong. As usual.
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Herbert-Hoover-Joan-Hoff-Wilson/dp/0881337056]Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive: Joan Hoff Wilson, Oscar Handlin: 9780881337051: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]

IF a book says so, he MUST have been a progressive right? lol


Well, he's not "progressive" the way modern conservatives think about it...

But in some ways you could say that the depression made him MORE progressive... notice the majority of his progressive actions didn't take place until WELL INTO the depression...

He didn't raise taxes UNTIL WE WERE DEEP IN DEPRESSION and he only did that to pay the bills...

He started some programs YEARS after the depression was in full force...

In short, he tried many conservative ideas of low taxes and low gov. involvement and spending for a good year into probably the greatest depression in the history of our nation... before deciding to change paths...



By this standard.... George W Bush was EXTREMELY progressive and so was Reagan...

MUCH MORE than Hoover...

 

[Dad2three]

More bullshit assertions from the newest ignoramus on board. Average UE during Roosevelt's time pre war was over 15%. His policies directly led to the recession becoming a full blown depression. He doubled down on the progressive Hoover's failed policies.

Got it, MORE crap from the low life conservative. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you


I know, it wasn't the overproduction of the 20's, the 'markets will take care of themselves' of Harding/Coolidge that caused the GOP great recession, it was FDR and Hoover *shaking head*

Sorry Bubba, only the low informed types who buy into Ayn Rand's fiction believes AEI, CATO,etc rewriting of history

Stocks lost 90% of their value by the time FDR came into office, thousands of banks had failed and unemployment was over 24%, BUT it was FDR who caused it? lol

Sorry, my minor in history against you and your right wing garbage says YOU are full of it...

No, FDR's heavy-handed meddling in the marketplace escalated a disaster into a catastrophe.

The depression during the Harding/Coolidge administration lasted months. Like my bud Crusader Frank likes to say, the Great Depression lasted longer than the biblical seven lean years.

Got it, you don't understand the 1920-21 recession versus the GOP's great depression



1921 and All That

Every once in a while I get comments and correspondence indicating that the right has found an unlikely economic hero: Warren Harding. The recovery from the 1920-21 recession supposedly demonstrates that deflation and hands-off monetary policy is the way to go.

But have the people making these arguments really looked at what happened back then? Or are they relying on vague impressions about a distant episode, with bad data, that has been spun as a confirmation of their beliefs?

OK, I’m not going to invest a lot in this. But even a cursory examination of the available data suggests that 1921 has few useful lessons for the kind of slump we’re facing now.

Brad DeLong has recently written up a clearer version of a story I’ve been telling for a while (actually since before the 2008 crisis) — namely, that there’s a big difference between inflation-fighting recessions, in which the Fed squeezes to bring inflation down, then relaxes — and recessions brought on by overstretch in debt and investment. The former tend to be V-shaped, with a rapid recovery once the Fed relents; the latter tend to be slow, because it’s much harder to push private spending higher than to stop holding it down.

And the 1920-21 recession was basically an inflation-fighting recession — although the Fed was trying to bring the level of prices, rather than the rate of change, down. What you had was a postwar bulge in prices, which was then reversed:

Money was tightened, then loosened again:

.....All of this has zero relevance to an economy in our current situation, in which the recession was brought on by private overstretch, not tight money, and in which the zero lower bound is all too binding.

So do we have anything to learn from the macroeconomics of Warren Harding? No.


MORE HEE

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/1921-and-all-that/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

 

[The Rabbi]

No, Hoover was not a progressive, but an unusually talented man at the wrong pace at the wrong time. It is not disparaging FDR to say Hoover was twice the man he was, though altogether a less successful president. Few with an iota of history would argue.

Yeah, you'er wrong. As usual.
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Herbert-Hoover-Joan-Hoff-Wilson/dp/0881337056]Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive: Joan Hoff Wilson, Oscar Handlin: 9780881337051: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]

IF a book says so, he MUST have been a progressive right? lol


Well, he's not "progressive" the way modern conservatives think about it...

But in some ways you could say that the depression made him MORE progressive... notice the majority of his progressive actions didn't take place until WELL INTO the depression...

He didn't raise taxes UNTIL WE WERE DEEP IN DEPRESSION and he only did that to pay the bills...

He started some programs YEARS after the depression was in full force...

In short, he tried many conservative ideas of low taxes and low gov. involvement and spending for a good year into probably the greatest depression in the history of our nation... before deciding to change paths...



By this standard.... George W Bush was EXTREMELY progressive and so was Reagan...

MUCH MORE than Hoover...

No actually he didnt try low taxes and less government. In fact the opposite.
The Depression Begins: President Hoover Takes Command

 

[Dad2three]

More bullshit assertions from the newest ignoramus on board. Average UE during Roosevelt's time pre war was over 15%. His policies directly led to the recession becoming a full blown depression. He doubled down on the progressive Hoover's failed policies.

Got it, MORE crap from the low life conservative. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you


I know, it wasn't the overproduction of the 20's, the 'markets will take care of themselves' of Harding/Coolidge that caused the GOP great recession, it was FDR and Hoover *shaking head*

Sorry Bubba, only the low informed types who buy into Ayn Rand's fiction believes AEI, CATO,etc rewriting of history

Stocks lost 90% of their value by the time FDR came into office, thousands of banks had failed and unemployment was over 24%, BUT it was FDR who caused it? lol

Sorry, my minor in history against you and your right wing garbage says YOU are full of it...

Yeah, the "overproduction"thesis was disproven eons ago. It doesnt even make economic sense. Not that you'd understand that, of course.

Disproven? lol, OH IN RIGHT WING WORLD PERHAPS, in reality, not so much


American History the causes of the Great Depression

Overproduction

One of the critical faults that led to the Great Depression was overproduction. This was not just a problem in industrial manufacturing, but also an agricultural issue. From as early as the middle of the 1920s, American farmers were producing far more food than the population was consuming. As farmers expanded their production to aid the war effort during WWI they also mechanised their techniques, a process which both improved their output but also cost a lot of money, putting farmers into debt. Furthermore, land prices for many farmers dropped by as much as 40 per cent – as a result, the agricultural system began to fail throughout the 20s, leaving large sections of the population with little money and no work. Thus, as demand dropped with increasing supply, the price of products fell, in turn leaving the over-expanded farmers short-changed and farms often foreclosed. This saw unemployment rise and food production fall by the end of the 1920s.

While agriculture struggled, industry soared in the decade preceding the Wall Street Crash. In the ‘boom’ period before the ‘bust’, a lot of people were buying things like cars, household appliances and consumer products. Importantly, however, these purchases were often made on credit. And as production continued apace the market quickly dried up; too many products were being produced with too few people earning enough money to buy them – the factory workers themselves, for example, could not afford the goods coming out of the factories they worked in. The economic crisis that soon would engulf Europe for reasons to be explained, meant that goods could not be sold across the Atlantic either, leaving America’s industries to create an unsustainable surplus of products.

Causes of the Great Depression

 

[Dad2three]

Yeah, you'er wrong. As usual.
Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive: Joan Hoff Wilson, Oscar Handlin: 9780881337051: Amazon.com: Books

IF a book says so, he MUST have been a progressive right? lol


Well, he's not "progressive" the way modern conservatives think about it...

But in some ways you could say that the depression made him MORE progressive... notice the majority of his progressive actions didn't take place until WELL INTO the depression...

He didn't raise taxes UNTIL WE WERE DEEP IN DEPRESSION and he only did that to pay the bills...

He started some programs YEARS after the depression was in full force...

In short, he tried many conservative ideas of low taxes and low gov. involvement and spending for a good year into probably the greatest depression in the history of our nation... before deciding to change paths...



By this standard.... George W Bush was EXTREMELY progressive and so was Reagan...

MUCH MORE than Hoover...

No actually he didnt try low taxes and less government. In fact the opposite.
The Depression Begins: President Hoover Takes Command

LOW TAXES AND LESS GOV'T? LOL


Oh right, the conservatives answer to EVERYTHING. Let me know how cutting taxes has EVER created more jobs. And sorry you can't critically think about the causes of the GOP great depression, hint 'free markets'...

 

[The Rabbi]

IF a book says so, he MUST have been a progressive right? lol


Well, he's not "progressive" the way modern conservatives think about it...

But in some ways you could say that the depression made him MORE progressive... notice the majority of his progressive actions didn't take place until WELL INTO the depression...

He didn't raise taxes UNTIL WE WERE DEEP IN DEPRESSION and he only did that to pay the bills...

He started some programs YEARS after the depression was in full force...

In short, he tried many conservative ideas of low taxes and low gov. involvement and spending for a good year into probably the greatest depression in the history of our nation... before deciding to change paths...



By this standard.... George W Bush was EXTREMELY progressive and so was Reagan...

MUCH MORE than Hoover...

No actually he didnt try low taxes and less government. In fact the opposite.
The Depression Begins: President Hoover Takes Command

LOW TAXES AND LESS GOV'T? LOL


Oh right, the conservatives answer to EVERYTHING. Let me know how cutting taxes has EVER created more jobs. And sorry you can't critically think about the causes of the GOP great depression, hint 'free markets'...

Well JFK thought so, and his tax cuts created a boom. Reagan thought so and his tax cuts created a boom. Coolidge thought so and his tax cuts created a boom.
So there's threee different examples, including a Democrat. You lose.

And of course you kicked on Hoover being a progressive because the evidence overwhelmingly is he was. So was Teddy Roosevelt, of course.

 

[itfitzme]

No actually he didnt try low taxes and less government. In fact the opposite.
The Depression Begins: President Hoover Takes Command

LOW TAXES AND LESS GOV'T? LOL


Oh right, the conservatives answer to EVERYTHING. Let me know how cutting taxes has EVER created more jobs. And sorry you can't critically think about the causes of the GOP great depression, hint 'free markets'...

Well JFK thought so, and his tax cuts created a boom. Reagan thought so and his tax cuts created a boom. Coolidge thought so and his tax cuts created a boom.
So there's threee different examples, including a Democrat. You lose.

Except, in every case, spending was increased as well. You do know that toprove causality, all other variables have to be held constant. Surely you have a grasp of this simple concept?

 

[bripat9643]

No, Hoover was not a progressive, but an unusually talented man at the wrong pace at the wrong time. It is not disparaging FDR to say Hoover was twice the man he was, though altogether a less successful president. Few with an iota of history would argue.

Yeah, you'er wrong. As usual.
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Herbert-Hoover-Joan-Hoff-Wilson/dp/0881337056]Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive: Joan Hoff Wilson, Oscar Handlin: 9780881337051: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]

IF a book says so, he MUST have been a progressive right? lol


Well, he's not "progressive" the way modern conservatives think about it...

But in some ways you could say that the depression made him MORE progressive... notice the majority of his progressive actions didn't take place until WELL INTO the depression...

He didn't raise taxes UNTIL WE WERE DEEP IN DEPRESSION and he only did that to pay the bills...

He started some programs YEARS after the depression was in full force...

In short, he tried many conservative ideas of low taxes and low gov. involvement and spending for a good year into probably the greatest depression in the history of our nation... before deciding to change paths...



By this standard.... George W Bush was EXTREMELY progressive and so was Reagan...

MUCH MORE than Hoover...

Horseshit:

Herbert Hoover, Forgotten Progressive: the 31st President Was a Big Government Liberal | everysilverlining

2) Following the crash, the Hoover administration went into spending overdrive. Excessive government spending is, of course, a staple of liberal economics and has been since FDR’s reign from 1933 to 1945. But FDR wouldn’t have had the opportunity to implement the New Deal had Hoover not planted its foundations for him. Federal expenditures climbed by 4.7 percent between 1928 and 1929, and over the next three years they rose 8 percent, 17.2 percent, and 15 percent, respectively. Excluding military expenditures, spending under Hoover exploded by an enormous 259 percent. By the end of his term in 1933, federal expenditures had climbed more than 50 percent in dollar terms – the biggest increase in federal spending ever recorded during peacetime. In percentage terms, federal expenditures grew more during Hoover’s one term than they did during the first seven years of FDR’s presidency. Take note, progressives: it didn’t work then, and it isn’t going to work now.

3) Public works projects are also a key component in any liberal or “progressive” plan to get the country working again. Lo and behold, public works projects undertaken by Hoover include the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the Los Angeles Aqueduct, and Hoover Dam. In late 1929, Hoover contacted all forty-eight state governors to make a similar appeal for expanded public works. He went to Congress with a $160 million tax cut, but it was coupled with a doubling of resources for public buildings and dams, highways, and harbors. Even after this massive increase in public works, Hoover proposed in 1932 to set up a Public Works Administration to coordinate and expand even more Federal public works. (Once again, progressives would do well to recognize the similarity of Hoover’s plan to that of the current administration, and the similarly abysmal results they produced.)

4) Within a month of the 1929 stock market crash, Hoover refused to accept the natural economic cycle in which a market crash is followed by cuts in business investment, production and wages. He convened conferences with the nation’s business leaders in order to urge them to keep wages artificially high, even though profits and prices were both falling. These businessmen were told by Hoover that they had to act “voluntarily” to keep up wage rates even if profits should collapse (warning that he would get Congress to force compliance if they failed to comply “voluntarily”). Hoover said at the time, “No president before has ever believed that there was a government responsibility in such cases… We had to pioneer a new field.”

5) In June 1930, President Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff into law. It was the most protectionist legislation in American history, and as a result the average tariff rate soared to 59.1 percent. As Professor Barry Poulson describes:

“The act raised the rates on the entire range of dutiable commodities; for example, the average rate increased from 20 percent to 34 percent on agricultural products; from 36 percent to 47 percent on wines, spirits, and beverages; from 50 to 60 percent on wool and woolen manufactures. In all, 887 tariffs were sharply increased and the act broadened the list of dutiable commodities to 3,218 items.”

Hoover signed it into law despite the protest of over 1000 economists, and even with international trade in collapse, he defended the legislation against FDR’s critiques, saying in 1932 that Roosevelt would have Americans compete with “peasant and sweated labor abroad.”

In the spring of 1930, the New York Times accurately concluded that “no one in his place could have done more.” Indeed, no one could have, and Hoover proudly touted this fact during his campaign for re-election and throughout the rest of his life. During his campaign in the fall of 1932, Hoover himself summed up his progressive efforts to cure the depression:

 

[HelenaHandbag]

Got it, MORE crap from the low life conservative. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you


I know, it wasn't the overproduction of the 20's, the 'markets will take care of themselves' of Harding/Coolidge that caused the GOP great recession, it was FDR and Hoover *shaking head*

Sorry Bubba, only the low informed types who buy into Ayn Rand's fiction believes AEI, CATO,etc rewriting of history

Stocks lost 90% of their value by the time FDR came into office, thousands of banks had failed and unemployment was over 24%, BUT it was FDR who caused it? lol

Sorry, my minor in history against you and your right wing garbage says YOU are full of it...

No, FDR's heavy-handed meddling in the marketplace escalated a disaster into a catastrophe.

The depression during the Harding/Coolidge administration lasted months. Like my bud Crusader Frank likes to say, the Great Depression lasted longer than the biblical seven lean years.

Got it, you don't understand the 1920-21 recession versus the GOP's great depression



1921 and All That

Every once in a while I get comments and correspondence indicating that the right has found an unlikely economic hero: Warren Harding. The recovery from the 1920-21 recession supposedly demonstrates that deflation and hands-off monetary policy is the way to go.

But have the people making these arguments really looked at what happened back then? Or are they relying on vague impressions about a distant episode, with bad data, that has been spun as a confirmation of their beliefs?

OK, I’m not going to invest a lot in this. But even a cursory examination of the available data suggests that 1921 has few useful lessons for the kind of slump we’re facing now.

Brad DeLong has recently written up a clearer version of a story I’ve been telling for a while (actually since before the 2008 crisis) — namely, that there’s a big difference between inflation-fighting recessions, in which the Fed squeezes to bring inflation down, then relaxes — and recessions brought on by overstretch in debt and investment. The former tend to be V-shaped, with a rapid recovery once the Fed relents; the latter tend to be slow, because it’s much harder to push private spending higher than to stop holding it down.

And the 1920-21 recession was basically an inflation-fighting recession — although the Fed was trying to bring the level of prices, rather than the rate of change, down. What you had was a postwar bulge in prices, which was then reversed:

Money was tightened, then loosened again:

.....All of this has zero relevance to an economy in our current situation, in which the recession was brought on by private overstretch, not tight money, and in which the zero lower bound is all too binding.

So do we have anything to learn from the macroeconomics of Warren Harding? No.


MORE HEE

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/1921-and-all-that/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Whose sock monkey are you?