I agree with UCLA Staff Members.
Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
After scrutinizing Roosevelt’s record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.
“Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump,” said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Economics. “We found that a relapse isn’t likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies.”
In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.
“President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible for the Depression by reducing prices and wages, and by extension reducing employment and demand for goods and services,” said Cole, also a UCLA professor of economics. “So he came up with a recovery package that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies.”
OK, I was being facetious with the title. But that isn’t going to stop me from keeping this link for-evar.
There is much more at the link.
Yet another academic study to confirm the obvious, or at least obvious to all but the ObamaNation. Our tax dollars at work.
I sure hope they already have tenure, for this heresy against one of the Left’s scions will surely be used to deny them same.
Of course, that was the original intent of tenure — to protect true academic freedom. You can thank Ward Churchill and others of his ilk (i.e., most of current academia) for using it as a shield for their ideas, while using it as a club to silence opposing viewpoints.
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