There have been sub prime mortgages for decades, and when they went bankrupt, which many did, it did not bring down the whole system. The banks in my neighborhood in 1972, 1981 and 2002 when I bought different houses demanded adequate income statements, and large down payments. The poor, the speculators and the foolish didn't force the banks and the predator lenders like Countrywide Financial and their peers to make the rules. As I recall GW Bush was one of the biggest home-owner cheerleaders, and his brother Neil was involved heavily with the Silverado Savings & Loan, the biggest bank to go bust if the S & L Scandal. Wall Street repackaged the debt to investors, not Senator Dodd and Barney Frank. Wall Street created REITS and other debt-swapping gimmicks. Yes, there is much blame to touch many in the government, but more regulation and transparency isn't socialism, its good common sense.

RJ Garfunkel

By the way the right-wing throws around the term "socialism" all the time. Have you ever compared anything the Democrats or the left did or said that has any connection to "socialist" countries like Sweden? I doubt you have any clue how socialism really works.

As I recall the Constitution has been amended many times. Would you suggest the elimination of those amendments. As I remember from high school, the Constitution, nor the Bill of Rights allowed voting for Blacks, women, non-property holders, and that Jim Crow southern states deprived people of the right to vote for generations. Maybe we'll go back to the 3/5ths Compromise. How small should our government be? Maybe we should go back to the Articles of Confederation and tariffs between states. Bring back the "Poll Tax" and maybe the chain gangs. Your concept of "clock reversal" may really portend a change for the better. Nancy Reagan's astrologer assured me of that fact.

RJ Garfunkel

At least he can spell, what's your excuse! "Impeachment takes to long"- why don't you sign up for a lynching committee, your rhetoric fits! Its your kind of talk that makes people sick, and he owns what? The decades old mess of greed and foolishness! The infrastructure that is crumbling after years of neglect? The Chimerica and petro dollar outflow? The Katrina Mess? The stock market crash or its recovery? The continuing morass in Afghanistan? What's your plan General Patton?

RJ Garfunkel

RJ Garfunkel

Why do you people always equate mixed economies, fair taxation, the graduated income tax, and regulation with Socialism. I do not recall Norman Thomas endorsing FDR! I do not recall JFK, Truman, LBJ or Humphrey and any others endorsing Socialism. Did something happen while my back was turned? Or is this another "red herring" like "who lost China." Simplistic answers like smaller government smack of the Articles of Confederation. Come up with some solutions not, the Tea Party answers. Since when did smaller government accomplish anything. If you believe in Social Darwinism and survival of the fittest, get out your guns, because there are more of them then you think. I suggest you raise the birthrate of the Eurocentrics and barricade your home. By the way, the UK, France, Germany and Israel, who have had successful economies, have weathered economic storms by using mixed economies and social safety nets! Sometimes the spigot of fiscal and monetary policy must be blended one way or the other! You must have forgotten the lessons of David Stockman, who went to jail, Arthur Laffer, and all the folks at ENRON and the other monopolistic brigands who have abused the public with de-regulation and flim flam economics.

RJ Garfunkel,
Confirmed Capitalist, but a realist

As I recall Eisenhower criticized Earl Warren, thought he nomination was his worst mistake, Teddy Roosevelt sparred with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jefferson sparred with John Marshall, Gerald Ford, when in Congress attempted to impeach Douglas, FDR criticized the Nine Old Men, and Nixon would have put the Court in jail over the Elsberg Ruling if he could.

RJ Garfunkel

By the way I was not judging economic growth on governmental employment at the local, state, and federal level. I was just stating, the government employment has grown under GOP Presidents, Governors, Congresses and Mayors. Without government employment at the levels of the Coolidge Administration, it was 4%, the Reagan Administration would have had an unemployment rate higher than all of the years of the New Deal. I have shown, statistically that unemployment dropped significantly in the 7 out of 8 years of the New Deal, and only in the belt-tightening year of late 1937, with the FED raising interest rates, under pressure from the Southern Dixiecrats did it spike upward. Creating jobs in the future is going to be tough in this environment of low interest rates, with no room to go further down, the lack of the need for 17 million new cars, the over loaded toxic housing market, tight credit, the plethora of retail outlets and huge pre-Obama $11 trillion deficits. Where were you deficit hawks over the previous 8 years? There is very little wiggle room for either party. Skyrocketing health care costs along with education costs are hurting our growth and endangering our Medicare and Medicaid needs. What does the right recommend? Doe it recommend firing all of our workers? That will creat more unemployment. How about 20% clawbacks? How about a draft army? What are the solutions? Shlaes and Bush II were on record as recession deniers is that right or wrong?

RJ Garfunkel

Part II

Before the Crash of 1929, more wealth was in the hands of fewer people then any other period in our long history. Unrestricted capitalism led to wild speculation in the market places, an eventual credit crunch, and since we didn't believe in "safety nets" or entitlements, the ensuing collapse devastated our social order. In Arthur M. Schlesinger Junior’s great works, on that period, which include The Crisis of the Old Order, and the Coming of the New Deal much of this history is accurately reported and eloquently described. As in 1929, tax policies from Reagan on, with the exception of the eight prosperous years of the Clinton Administration, favored the rich, have shrunk the middle class, and have concentrated more wealth in fewer hands than at any time since the crash. This period of “wonderful nothingness,” which is what the 1920’s has been variously described, ended with the fall of one of its great characters and swindlers, Richard Whitney and the Bull Market in late October of 1929.

Amity Shlaes is entitled to her own views, and I regard her as part of the "revisionist right-wing" of FDR haters. She and her acolyte supporters can twist history, but they will not reverse it. Over 1000 books have been written on FDR and 98% of them are quite laudatory and positive. Long after your bones, my bones and the younger ones of Ms. Schlaes are dust the positive legacy of FDR will be with the world, unlike Hardin, Coolidge, Hoover, Nixon, Ford, Bush I and II and even Ronald Reagan, the Teflon Man!

RJ Garfunkel

Part I

As to my credentials, I am not a poster child of the right or the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. I was a history major from Boston University, worked on Wall Street, was a partner in a manufacturing business for 25 years, a licensed financial professional for 16 years, allowed to sell equities and variable products, and am a long-time investor in Wall Street and come from a family that has long-roots in capitalism and investment. I lecture and write on FDR and the New Deal and you can Google my name and go into my blog. I have been involved in local politics for 40+ years and still run campaigns when asked. I have run many. My wife was an American Studies major at a prestigious Ivy League school and worked for a Congressman for 8 years, and my son graduated from Princeton as a EE major, and my daughter works for the Kennedy School at Harvard. I have known the good, bad and the ugly, and I met Ms. Amity Schlaes and heard her talk at the FDR Library at the Roosevelt Summer Bookfest. I disagree with her conclusions and glib rationale. I spoke to her and challenged her positions in a gentlemanly way that rarely exists on this blog. I reflected on her opinions. The piece below I took from an essay that I wrote last year. You can find it on the internet: FDR, the New Deal and the Revision of the Right!

Shlaes a graduate Yale University magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree,[ writes a syndicated column for Bloomberg News]. She is a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her many appearances on television and radio include commentary on public radio for Marketplace.

Her Wall Street Journal piece on New Deal job creation noted that such jobs may not always increase productivity. She wrote a column for the Financial Times for five years, for which she won the International Policy Network's Bastiat Prize for Journalism in 2002. Before that, she worked at the Wall Street Journal, where she was a member of the editorial board. She has also written for The New Yorker, The American Spectator, Commentary Magazine, Foreign Affairs, National Review, and The New Republic, among others. Her obituary of Milton Friedman appeared in The New York Sun.
On 2 September 2005, Shlaes wrote a column for the Financial Times arguing that the George W. Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina showed that it had been well prepared for the disaster and that George W. Bush had not been hindered by consideration of federalism in his response. Ten days later, in another Financial Times column, Shlaes noted that there had in fact been delays in responding to Katrina, but argued that the Bush Administration should not be held responsible for them, because they were simply an unfortunate result of federalism

Part II to follow-

RJ Garfunkel

That's hogwash! GNP went up each year from 1934 to 1938, the following: 14.5, 11.1, 14.3. and 9.7% dropped for the recession of 1938 and went up 7.9 and 10.2% - 1939 and 1940. Unemployment dropped in those same years, 12.9., 7.3, 16.4, and 14.8%. It rose dramatically because of the recession caused by tightening the budget, and when the pump was primed again it dropped again 9.5 and 15% in 1939 and 1940. Shlaes is wrong in her analysis. If you take into consideration jobs created through the WPA unemployment reached was at 8% by the end of the New Deal, the same as it averaged in Reagan's eight years. In our day government employment accounts for 16% of the work force. Reduce that to New Deal levels and there would have 15-18% unemployment throughout the last 25 years.

RJ Garfunkel

As I recall Gerald Ford, as a Congressman, called for the impeachment of Justice William O. Douglas and had hearings regarding that action, because one of Douglas's articles was printed in a magazine called Evergreen. The Court had been criticized by presidents going back as far as our history exists. Jefferson had problems with John Marshall, Teddy Roosevelt had legendary fights with Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Eisenhower was unhappy with Earl Warren. FDR criticized the Nine Old Men and the Republic stood. Obama is right about this horrible ruling that has nothing to do with individual rights but uncontrolled corporate power, greed, and money. This ruling could open the door to foreign corporations flooding our, now out of control, electoral costs.

RJ Garfunkel