John Zogby: Is 2008 a 1932 Moment?

[marmar]

from HuffPost:




John Zogby
Is 2008 a 1932 Moment?
Posted November 14, 2007 | 12:14 PM (EST)



At this point in 1931, Franklin Roosevelt did not have a New Deal. He was running against a Hoover presidency and a country that had gone haywire.

The New Deal developed after Roosevelt was elected and was based not on ideology, but on a simple principle that Roosevelt himself underscored. To paraphrase: "I'm not sure what we're going to do, but we have to try something."

At this same point in time in 1979, if Ronald Reagan thought that he was going to win the presidency, he was probably the only person in America who thought so. That victory was not assured until the weekend before the election, and again it was based less on ideology and more on the fact that the voters sensed things had gone haywire due to stagflation and the Iranian hostage crisis.

But Reagan took his victory and turned it into a major redefinition of federalism, just as Roosevelt had done 48 years earlier.

So what's going on today? We have a president with a near record-low job performance rating -- 24 percent. (The record lows were Harry Truman after he fired Douglas MacArthur, and Richard Nixon the day before he resigned. Both were at 23 percent. )

But the Democrats who run Congress have an 11 percent job approval rating. Let's just note that in my polling in 1995, O.J. Simpson was at 16 percent.

Voters are angry and disillusioned. Their faith in governmental institutions is at a record low. Much of that has to do with failure in Iraq and our damaged image abroad, but even more it has to do with Katrina and a pervasive sense that government at all levels is disconnected from Americans' needs and from the capability of handling a major catastrophe.

When Americans identify the issues they consider most important, they talk about Iraq, but that may be less of an issue next year than the combination of the economy and health care. Health care is the number one economic issue in the country today and health insurance is what separates many Americans between middle-class status and near poverty. In the past, Americans have not voted with a sense of urgency about health care. In 2008, with one in three voters who presently have employer-based insurance afraid of losing some or all of it, they will vote for universal health coverage. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-zogby/is-2008-a-1932-moment_b_72615.html

[Demeter]

1. No Amount of Wishing Is Going to Stop 1929--the Sequel

It can't be 1932 before it's 1929.

[marmar]

2. "No Amount of Wishing Is Going to Stop 1929--the Sequel"

True that.

[sss1977]

3. Let it be known the numbers show...

We'd feel better if O.J. Simpson took over Congress. Maybe he can get us our shit back.

[flashl]

4. We'll be in the same position, cause

we'll have to wait for the Goldman's to get theirs.

[loudsue]

11. Now THAT was a DUzy!

:rofl:

[marmar]

12. LMAO

:spray:

[babylonsister]

5. Rec'd. nt

[Joanne98]

6. "During a crisis, the ideas that are adopted, are the ones that are laying around"

We need to go back to Keyesnian economics!

[CGowen]

7. 1933 was the end of the Pound as a world reserve currency

October 18, 2003

The End of the US Dollar?
by David Chapman


With the introduction of the new peach-toned $20 bills is the US signalling the end of the greenback? Well certainly the greenback, which has been in place for over 100 years, will now have to share some space with money of a different colour but is it really the end of the US dollar as some have intimated?

We doubt it but when the currency has fallen 24% since peaking in July 2001 some will jump on any excuse to say the bottom is falling out. The US Dollar has been the reserve currency of the world since the end of WW2 and the Bretton Woods Agreement (July 1944). Bretton Woods signalled the end of the British Pound as the worlds reserve currency. The Pound was the principal currency of the world for over 100 years from 1816 to 1933 and it was backed by gold.

But at the outset of WW1 Britain and other European countries came off the gold standard because of the financial dislocations caused by the war. The US$ still backed by gold slowly began to replace the faltering British Pound but by 1933 the US joined them in coming off the gold standard due to the deteriorating deflationary conditions of the Great Depression. The period was also marked by the collapse in international trade and financial flows prior To WW2.

With Britain and Europe in ruins after WW2 the way was clear for the US, who emerged unscathed by war to assume the role as the world's reserve currency and the king of the international financial markets. And backing the US Dollar was once again convertibility into gold. The Bretton Woods Agreement saw other key features such as fixed but adjustable exchange rates against the US Dollar and the birth of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

...

http://www.safehaven.com/article-1049.htm

[tom_paine]

8. No. Imperial Subjecst of Amerika don't really get to choose our leaders.

Oh, we get the Kabuki Theater of phonied up elections which, even if they are not electronically rigged, are now so untransparent and beset with felonious voter suppression performed right out in the open, that such a relatively unfiltererd expression of the Will of the People is simply no longer possible in 21st Century Imperial Amerika.

No...longer...possible...99% chance that is that case.

[Wednesdays]

9. In that case, 2008 might just be a 1775 moment.

nt

[tom_paine]

10. Or a 1938 moment.

The Bushies will be desperate and angry to hold on to what they have stolen. They will recognize that years of reprogramming has turned 24-40% of Amerikans into Good Germans or of the Kinder and Gentler Nazi mentality.

This cadre of madmen and women is a tool to the Bushies and nothing more. When Crunch Time comes, you can make book that the Bushies will use every means at their disposal to stop it.

You really think the Imperial Subjects of Amerika have it in us to be 1775? Look around you. Look at yourself, at all our selves. I think it much more likely that we DO have it in us to have a 1938, though. We will make fantastic Camp Guards, Neighborhood Spies, Brownshirts and Blackshirts.

Any few that have the spirit of the Old America in them, well let's just say that kinder and gentler 1938 leads to kinder and gentler 1943 (no industrialized murder, just slave labor camps with shitty food and medical care, where lots of Enemies of the State just up and die at astonishing rates, anyway).

See, Amerika is NOTHING like Nazi Germany!