Amity Shlaes and Jonathan Alter debate the Great Depression (1 of 9)

On October 12, 2009, the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies and the Seidman College of Business at GVSU co-hosted a debate between Bloomberg's Amity Shlaes and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. The debate was titled "Nothing to Fear? Debating the 1929 Economic Collapse," and was hosted at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Great
• Depression
• FDR
• World
• War
• II
• Black
• Tuesday
• Keynes
• American
• History
• leadership
• economics

[glorp896]

@baron well if wall street and all that much heralded FREEDUMB was to work wonders for fairness, empathy and justice in the world i wouldn't think the checks and balances of governmental regulation would be needed, but that very clearly has not been the case - conversely people complain about too much regulation holding up the economy, yet VERY clearly history will show we didn't have enough oversight, regulation or even clarity of the overly complex investment vehicles involved (derivatives...

[baronmorris]

@glorp896

right on, glorp! enjoyed your comments above, as well. Cheers! (amidst the entropy)

[glorp896]

@boing3887 shoot, i spelled it wrong, i meant to write SHE IS SHLAEZY?

[glorp896]

@boing this bothers me: the idea that if we just give tax breaks and allow the rich to have their money they will soon go out of their way to provide jobs and invest in the economy at a more risky scale than before, especially now that we need that with 9%+ unemployment, but greed is a fear based guarding mechanism that will hoard such money at even less risk then before recessions/depressions and as such i think gov't must be involved to either incentivize investment in job creation or DO IT!

[glorp896]

@boing3887 whats interesting is to read that Albert Speer, the great architect of war times production who streamlined much of the bureaucracy and has even been estimated to have prolonged the war another 6 months or so due to his amazing success said that at a time germany was getting into free market industrial production with massive incentives for the industrialists america was becoming what germany had been blamed for - a socialistic state/fed run economy determining war times production...

[glorp896]

@boing3887 she is Slaezy

[glorp896]

@boing milt is really the standard to debunk? well then... i guess i like freedom beyond milt - Friedman was originally a Keynesian, a supporter of the New Deal and an advocate of government intervention in the economy... he later went up against Keynes and even snubbed the FED but worked with it in terms of small conservative additions to the money supply - so he wasn't always a deregulationist. i sent $100 to ron paul to help him AUDIT THE FED. insane is when you are left with worthless paper

[glorp896]

@boing i applaud the end of the gold standard AND letting people keep their gold AND backing fiat money with REAL money (gold/silver), just as foreign exchange rates fluctuate as to what a dollar is worth (stupidly enough compared to other fiat money) so should also our fiat money be in flux with the free market trade of gold/silver... we shouldn't let market psychology guide the worth and PERCEIVED value of our paper money, it should have tangible intrinsic value (METAL); exchangeable always

[glorp896]

@boing3887 if people were able to keep the gold, we get off the standard and then that gold still existed within the american people's families it would now be worth INCREDIBLY more than the fiat paper money he gave as exchange, which weirdly enough would also be collectible but people didn't see it that way, they just deposited it in banks and spent it... you are correct, as to adding other variables, i'm just illustrating how all fiat money fails in history, ours in no exception...

[boing3887]

@glorp896

the problem is that amity shlaes, in researching for her "book," failed to do something very basic. if she was going to write about an economic event, then she needs to learn economics 101. she hasn't done that. she claims to hold to the "neoclassical" view, but her views are not neoclassical in any form that i recognize it. her book is a rejection of milton friedman's monetarism.

she could have easily talked to or read ben bernanke but didnt, either through laziness or dishonesty