George “Hoover” Bush?
Scarecrow at Firedoglake is engaging in the latest form of Bush bashing. This one involves comparing President Bush to President Hoover:
As Ian noted, with the Fed’s monetary tools stetched, we could use some fiscal policy help from Congress and the President. But as if to mock us, President George “Hoover” Bush warned business leaders that government should avoid “overcorrecting the economy” — as though the problem we’re facing is not a Fed running out of options but rather a government trying to do too much instead of relying on the unfettered markets.
Markets? The Fed has already used $400 billion of its $800 billion of readily available funds trying to bail out the wizards of Wall Street, and is facing the need to print money — and risk inflation — to retain further leverage. The Fed is in the process of taking over and running Wall Street financial institutions, only a step removed from nationalization.
Meanwhile, we’re stuck with President Hoover and in desparate need of FDR. So it would be helpful if the media, who are recently into censoring black ministers, began instead to ask Obama and Clinton about how good their economic advisers are.
Like most Bush bashing it’s based on a falsehood. It’s a myth that Hoover sat by and let the nation sink during the Great Depression. Robert Samuelson, no rabid conservative, writes:
The depression is often blamed on the passivity of President Hoover and the Federal Reserve. This view is simplistic. True, Hoover’s commitment to a balanced budget—the orthodoxy of the day—precluded big new spending programs. And his decision in 1932 to combat a budget deficit by raising taxes sharply is widely viewed as a major blunder. But it is not true that Hoover and the Federal Reserve stood idly by and did nothing as the depression worsened. After the crash Hoover instituted a tax cut equal to 4 percent of federal revenues. He urged state and local governments to raise their spending on public works projects. Hoover also created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which provided loans to shaky banks, utilities, and railroads. In 1931 he suspended collection of foreign-debt payments to the United States, which he thought were impeding recovery of the international economy.
In a review of Gene Smiley’s excellent Rethinking the Great Depression Richard Ebeling points out Hoover didn’t sit on his hands while the economy tanked:
Smiley is at his best when analyzing the follies of government policies once the Depression had begun. The economic policies of the Hoover administration were an unmitigated disaster. Taxes were raised and the government set up subsidy programs to prop up both unprofitable industries and wasteful agricultural production. Congress passed the Hawley-Smoot tariff that raised import taxes to a historical high, which set off an international trade war that ruined import and export markets around the world.
Hoover also pressured business and labor unions to keep money wages artificially high in the misguided name of maintaining “purchasing power” in the economy. That merely succeeded in pricing more and more workers out of the labor market, creating an expanding circle of rising unemployment. Anti-competitive price and wage rigidities were the primary reason the Depression grew in intensity as the early 1930s progressed, Smiley emphasizes.
On the other end is EcuProphets who gripe Hoover was a full-blown activist compared to Bush. Either way the current President will never win over his critics. He shouldn’t even bother trying.
“Bush Is Becoming Hoover; Where is FDR?” [via memeorandum]
UPDATE: To Larry Kudlow Sen. Clinton and Obama are more like Hoover:
Senator Schumer is calling Bush “Herbert Hoover.” But Hoover signed protectionist Smoot-Hawley, just as Hillary and Obama are today trying to break up NAFTA. Hoover signed a huge tax increase, just as Hill-Bama are preaching. The Dems are emulating Hoover. Bush is trying to stop it.
His history is right.
You have obviously missed the basic point of referring to to Bush as Hoover. Bt cherry-picking specific facts, you attempt to undermine the argument. The whole point is that like Hoover, Bush refuses to acknowledge the fact that the economy is in the dumper! When Greenspan says this is the worst financial situation that we’ve been in since the 30’s, then Bush looks even MORE like Hoover when he talks about the “long-term” strength of the economy.