Housing and Fannie Mae: FDR's American Dream | Douglas E. French

Presented by Douglas E. French at "Recovery or Stagnation?," the Mises Circle in San Francisco; sponsored by Mark L. Hart, III, and hosted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Recorded Saturday, 29 August 2009.

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[RakeRocter]

suggestion:

please put the speaker's name, subject of speech, and date in the title.

thanks for all the wonderful videos!

[thomaserossi]

I recognize the errors already. Henry Hazlitt calls it "Blessed Destruction" the fallacious belief that destroying something a car or house gives someone a job. It's a fallacy that's been around for a VERY long time. Bastiat's broken window illustrated this perfectly. A thief breaks a window to steal bread. Some economists believe he created a job - new window pane, when in actuality he destroyed capital - baker's savings. This is the error that prompts the benefits of WWII.

[Mackingster]

I wonder who the one person was who disliked this video? :)I think this is a good thing, People should all watch this. 

[manoman0]

Get rid of the Governement and I'll buy an american car again. period.

[Paetaor]

My dad built our house (with his own hands) between 1975-77 with a bit of savings as he got the money.

Funny thing is that he bought a huge, but old house, in 1965, with 18 acres of land for under $3000 cash.

[stealthswimmer]

no need to downsize banking. That IS a productive area because it allows savings to be invested and thus more production to take place later on. Central banking on the other hand, has only ever existed with a government-granted monopoly.

[fluff125]

The problem is that "GDP" measures spending, much of which is government spending, which artificially inflates GDP. What needs to happen is that government spending is SUBTRACTED from GDP rather than added. This might motivate Washington differently

[TiredOldFart]

The root problem in the US is too much of the GDP is wasted on the non-productive activities of government and banking and finance. These activities don't produce any goods while consuming a disproportionate share of wealth.

The remedy is to vastly downsize government and banking to cause those people to seek work in productive tasks.

[82abhilash]

That is correct. The money that was borrowed was for building houses, not factories. There is no money coming in from these loans. These are loans for consumption, not loans for production. Ultimately the US government will have to do some drastic de-regulation and hopefully then Americans can go back to being the productive people they once where.

[thomaserossi]

It doesn't really work though. China was able to do this because they have a productive economy while the Japanese tried, even lowered interest to ZERO and achieve no substantial growth. Both the Chinese and Japanese were in a better position because they are productive (ie able to accumulate capital to remove debts). The US is not productive and will only become productive when we remove regulations and abolish the minimum wage.

[82abhilash]

You are thanking me for giving depressing input???

[Surhotchaperchlorome]

It's also why the Austrian school points out that the economy didn't fully recover from the Great Depression until AFTER the end of WWII; during it.