SYNDICATED COLUMN: Barack Hussein Hoover

It's 1933 Again. But FDR Lost.

NEW YORK—When the economic collapse began a year ago, many Americans took comfort in the historical parallels with the Great Depression. As it had in 1929, the current crisis began under the clueless reign of a Republican, George W. Bush. Universally reviled since his non-response to hurricane Katrina had exposed him and the men around him as both uncaring and incompetent—either one was forgivable, not both—Bush had reacted in the classic cold-blooded Republican form embodied by the president who gave his name to the Hoovervilles.

But all was not lost. The Democrats were coming in! Barack "Yes We Can" Obama was running well ahead in the polls. Soon our new FDR would clean up Bush's mess.

In the late fall of 2008 Bush looted the stripped-bare U.S. Treasury one final time. Hundreds of billions of dollars in "bailouts," this time for the benefit of the banks, insurance companies and automobile manufacturers whose profligate ways had contributed to the crisis, were doled out without pre-conditions. Millions of homeowners who faced foreclosure got no help whatsoever.

The way to stimulate a consumer-based economy is to put money directly into consumers' pockets. Instead, Bush deployed the standard GOP trickle-down approach. Boosting the banks would encourage them to restore liquidity, allowing individuals and businesses to resume borrowing. But the banks weren't stupid. They no longer wanted to lend to people who couldn't repay them. They held on to the cash. Credit markets seized up.

Like his father in 1992, Bush finished his reign as he had begun it: tone-deaf, cheerful, obliviously floating above the mayhem, utterly unconcerned with the fate of the average American staring at a stack of bills (and, in the case of a half a million Americans each month, a pink slip).

We were a nation without leadership. We knew there was no point looking to Bush and his GOP gangsters for help. But we weren't too worried. Obama was coming. He would be the neo-FDR. He would get things rolling again.

During the 1932 campaign Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised that help was on the way. In radio addresses and in speeches across the country, FDR argued against Hoover's trickle-down approach. He spoke on behalf of the "forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid."

In his lucid biography of FDR, "Traitor to His Class," the historian H.W. Brands described FDR's sales pitch: "For too long, he said, government had operated for the benefit of the wealthy, consigning the poor to the margins of public life. The Hoover administration had responded to the crisis by furnishing aid to big banks and corporations. This approach was characteristic of the Republicans, Roosevelt said, and characteristically wrong. It treated ordinary men and women as secondary to the powerful firms that had long dominated American life. And it certainly hadn't done anything to alleviate the Depression, which grew worse with each passing month. Roosevelt advocated "building from the bottom up," as he put it; supplying aid to those who most needed it."

Attacking the 2008-09 Great Recession wasn't rocket science. The causes of the economic collapse were strikingly similar: a real estate bubble feeding a stock market bubble, excessive borrowing and lending. So were the results: by the time Obama became president in January, the real unemployment rate—calculated the way it was calculated in 1933—was the same 20 percent it was when FDR took the oath of office.

Keynesian-influenced economists such as Paul Krugman pushed the incoming Obama Administration to repeat FDR's successful approach. Putting job creation first, FDR's New Deal programs directly put millions of people to work on government projects. The WPA, which employed eight million Americans during its existence, built bridges and highways. The TVA put up dams and the CCC improved national parks. The federal government even hired artists and authors to paint murals in public buildings and write travel guides to the 48 states.

Long after World War II ended the Depression once and for all, Americans made use of New Deal-era labor: "The WPA built or improved 651,000 miles of roads, 19,700 miles of water mains and 500 water treatment plants. Workers built 24,000 miles of sidewalks; 12,800 playgrounds; 24,000 miles of storm and sewer lines; 1,200 airport buildings; 226 hospitals; more than 5,900 schools, and more than two million privies," according to a PBS special about the New Deal. There's plenty of work to do now: the U.S. needs a national high-speed rail system to compete with European and Asian countries, not to mention new mass transit systems and school buildings. Pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq and hire Americans to start building!

Nine months into his presidency, however, it is clear that Obama is more Hoover than FDR. There has been virtually no investment in public infrastructure. There will be no public jobs programs. According to The New York Times, "Obama's economic advisers are sifting options for a new package of tax cuts and other job creation measures to be unveiled in next year's State of the Union address."

No one in Congress has proposed a single jobs-creation bill. Instead, they're working to extend unemployment benefits to 79 weeks. "As Democrats have found, aiding those who have lost their jobs," comments the Times, "is simpler than preventing more layoffs and creating more jobs."

Is Obama stupid? Or is he crazy? More than one out of five Americans is jobless. Many more are underemployed. There are six jobseekers for every job. Inflation is out of control. Yet he thinks we can wait until January 2010? Does he really believe that tax cuts create jobs?

Other ideas include "a tax credit for homebuyers and accelerated depreciation for businesses." There's also "a $3,000 tax credit for each new hire" and "allowing more businesses to deduct their net operating loans going back five years instead of the usual two."

When Bush flew home to Texas, we thought we were getting an FDR to replace a Hoover. Instead, we got another Hoover.

Even if we had a president willing and able to offer the bold and decisive leadership that FDR offered in the 1930s, the challenge posed by the fiscal crisis would be daunting. But we're not as lucky as our grandparents. We're stuck with a small-minded schmuck with the vision of a small-time Chicago alderman. Think about it: this is a guy who thinks tinkering with the tax code is going to save American capitalism!

It's 1933. This time, however, Hoover got reelected. Can we hold out until 1937 for a president who understands that we need 10 million new jobs, and that we need them yesterday?

(Ted Rall is the author, with Pablo G. Callejo, of the upcoming graphic memoir "The Year of Loving Dangerously.")

COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL

Cartoon for August 8, 2009

The New York Times reported a few days ago the results of a new study that shows that most people who lose their jobs never, ever recover.

Cartoon for August 3, 2009

Robert Reich sort of inspired this one.

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Heckuva Job, Barry

Obama, Losing Jobs, Soon to Be Shovel-Ready

Pro-Obama political cartoonists have drawn variations of the same cartoon: the president, in the role of badgered parent on a family trip, is driving a car labeled "The Economy." The American public, depicted as Uncle Sam or Joe Average, whines: "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?"

With official unemployment approaching 10 percent and underemployment at 16.5 percent, Americans are running out of money—and patience. Obama's approval ratings are down between 15 and 20 points, meaning that he has lost one in six Americans. His biggest weakness: the economy.

"I think the public knows three things: We inherited a total mess; we're working hard on it; and we're not going to get out of it overnight," says Chief White House propagandist Rahm Emanuel. That part is true.

The trouble for Obama is that people don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. "The key to what this year is about is rescuing the economy from falling off the cliff and trying to put in place the building blocks of recovery"—i.e., bailing out the banks, insurers and automakers, says Emanuel. That's what 2009 has been about for Obama. But for ordinary Americans, 2009 is about keeping or finding a job.

Creating jobs, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be an Obama Administration priority.

Were the bailouts necessary? Economists won't know for years. What we do know is that the Administration's approach won't give the American people what they want and need more than anything else: jobs.

What's the point of being patient? Even Obama admits help isn't on the way.

Obama's plan is Reaganomics redux. Give trillions of dollars to big corporations, he argues, and they'll use it to capitalize new ventures, hire workers, and unclog the credit markets. Eventually. "We must let it work the way it's supposed to, with the understanding that in any recession, unemployment tends to recover more slowly than other measures of economic activity," he says.

But even Obama admits it won't unfold "the way it's supposed to."

Obama says his plan "was not designed to work in four months. It was designed to work over two years." But if current trends continue, if everything goes the way he hopes, it will never work. We will have lost 14 million jobs by 2010. That would leave us up 4 million at most—a net loss of 10 million. That's a disaster.

And that's why Joe Public is so antsy. "Are we there yet?" isn't the right question. People think: "We can see how this is going to end: we'll be upside down in a ditch, plucking safety glass from our scalps."

Obama's approach won't work economically, and it won't work politically. Setting bailouts aside, what the United States needs right now—what it needed over a year ago—was a ginormous federal jobs program.

What happened to the infrastructure construction projects, like high-speed rail, that attracted so much enthusiasm during the campaign? Right-wing economic czar Lawrence Summers and a bunch of wimpy Democrats trashed them. "Transportation spending was gutted by Republicans who insisted on more tax cuts—none of whom voted for the measure anyway—and by Obama advisers who shifted priorities to advance policy goals," reported the AP.

Earlier this year the American Society of Civil Engineers said the nation's long-neglected highways, bridges and tunnels require $2,200 billion in repairs just to get them up to basic safety code—not including high-speed rail. Obama's stimulus plan included a mere $42 billion (less than two percent). Rail got $2 billion out of a needed $25 billion. Unless Obama does something soon, nothing is going to get built and unemployment will continue to soar.

Now that Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs are reporting record profits, it's time to "claw back" the bailouts, pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and direct federal dollars where we need them most: jobs. Give tax breaks to employers who add new workers, direct federal agencies to grow in size, and create zero-interest lending programs to laid-off would-be entrepreneurs. And let's build some friggin' infrastructure. Every $1 spent on infrastructure generates a $1.59 payback in the form of increased tax revenues—and creates a lasting legacy.

Speaking of cartoons, the Treasury Department's Bureau of Public Debt recently came under fire for trying to hire a cartoonist to "discuss the power of humor in the workplace [and] the close relationship between humor and stress." A Democratic Senator nixed the idea.

Too bad: at least Obama could have taken credit for creating one job.

COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL

Cartoon for July 20, 2009

Getting laid off has helped get me back to basics...the early 1990s.

Cartoon for March 8, 2009

The collapse of the New Economy leads to a reversal of the old conservative report to the downtrodden.

Cartoon for December 6, 2008: Blame the Victims

Corporations and their media apologists are blaming us for falling for their consumerist tricks.