I had not thought before how the current era is a reversal of the FDR era.
We've had the war. Now are we going to fight the peace?
It may well be true, as Joseph Stiglitz believes, that the Iraq War cost us $3 trillion. We know we put $1 trillion into the actual fight. Figure another $1 trillion in a phony real estate bubble, another $1 trillion of Confederate Money used to cover it all up, and you get to $3 trillion pretty quick.
War first, Depression after.
There was fear this would happen after World War II, and it was a background character in the film The Best Years of our Lives. What prevented that Depression was new demand, driven by the GI Bill and the Marshall Plan. It was summed up in a speech by Frederic March, playing sergeant-banker Al Stephenson:
There are some who say that the old bank is suffering from hardening of the arteries and of the heart. I refuse to listen to such radical talk. I say that our bank is alive, it's, it's generous, it's, it's human, and we're going to have such a line of customers seeking and getting small loans that people will think we're gambling with the depositors' money. And we will be. We'll be gambling on the future of this country.
Point is Republicans have always rejected the idea of stimulating demand, unless they could kill people with what resulted. Without the Cold War they would have crucified Truman, and the Baby Boom boom would not have happened.
It's amazing to me that the same people who thought nothing about laying out $1 trillion to kill people, and who ignored the theft of another $1 trillion covering it up, who called all this patriotic and ideologically sound, are now so uniformly condemning the President's efforts to stimulate demand and fight the war at home.
So let's be clear about this money. Let's be clear about where it comes from, where it's going, and what our choices are.
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