What if obama had not allowed the bailouts or fed actions? not give $$ to banks?

I know, results are not enough for you, you need toilet paper to believe it.

 

Bush/Paulson were the initial bail-out givers.

 

Here ya go:

http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/notsogreat-depression

 

That is an opinion piece. I asked for a macroeconomic study.

 

So you can't actually refer to one credible study that supports a position that you deem to be water-tight? Sounds like you're not very confident!

 

It's not really opinion.

It's history.

 

I've read many economic history pieces. That isn't one. Its an opinion piece

 

It is not an opinion that Harding cut taxes and spending at the same time and the major economic downturn lasted only a year. It's fact.

 

Sounds like you're easily manipulated by opinion pieces. Try Kuehn (2011, A note on America’s 1920–21 depression as an argument for austerity, Cambridge Journal of Economics Volume 36, Issue 1, pp. 155-160). This concludes:

"Austerity measures were implemented before the beginning of the 1920–21 depression and are mistakenly attributed to Warren Harding, whose modest fiscal contraction paled in comparison to that of the Wilson administration. Keynesians should also be careful to demarcate when deficit spending is an appropriate recession-fighting strategy. The example of the 1920–21 depression is instructive for this demarcation. Austerity is not obviously problematic when the economy is constrained on the supply side, despite its destructive consequences when demand is weak."

You seem to have re-defined what 'fact' means!

 

I don't think it's so much the interventionism (if there is a case to be made for that), but the huge amount of uncertainty created by that intervention. FDR's policies were all over the place and completely unpredictable. Perhaps had he chosen a path, even an interventionist one, and stuck with it then the recovery might have come much more quickly. Couple this uncertainty with the overt hostility of the administration towards business in general and it's little wonder the GD lasted as long as it did.

 

The entire world financial system would have collapsed, people would starve and riot, some populations (ours) would have been saved by Hitler and Mussolini types, and we'd be living through nuclear winter now. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

 

Nope, just chicken-little-esque prophets with foresight far greater than any human on Earth. The Lehman's failure and Bear Stern's restructuring didn't have catastrophic results so, pray tell, where do you get your crystal ball predictions from?

 

FDR's failure was conservatism. He failed to embrace Keynesianism (which was subsequently forced on the US). All history that confirms the ridiculousness of the laissez faire grunters

 

The cornucopia of new agencies created during the new deal doesn't reflect someone who's rejected Keynesianism, you might say he didn't go far enough but that also speaks to my narrative. He couldn't stick with any policy for any substantial period of time, he tried many approaches, but wouldn't stick with any of them.

You should check out the Higgs article in the Independent Review, the Regime uncertainty argument makes a lot of sense... to me at least.

 

Keynesianism didn't figure, thus the conservatism.

 

Don't see how you arrive at that conclusion given the huge number of new deal policies/agencies and the amount of direct stimulus.`

 

Sounds like you're using a variation of 'government is socialism' (here 'government is keynesianism'). Keynesianism was not embraced. Prove me wrong! Here's one that I haven't read to get you going

 

No, not at all. I can see where you'd arrive at that conclusion based on the number of agencies created by the New Deal, but the direct stimulus is the heart of Keynesianism. FDR used government both as an agency to reduce unemployment and as a way to inject liquidity into the market, the latter is the only part I view as Keynesian in nature.

I'll take a look at Zelizer's work. My point wasn't so much that one policy or another is at fault, my point is that FDR's failure to embrace any of them for any prolonged duration was the ultimate problem. You can't do Keynesianism one day and Austerity the next and then wage and price controls the next.

 

Cobblers! You've given the cliché and stamped your foot. You do that a lot.

 

My crystal ball tells me that the first time I go to the ATM and it says "closed", I will be rioting.

 

The stimulus was a drop in the bucket and all of the new policies ain't gonna mean squat.