Everyone is sitting at the edge of their chairs in anticipation of President Barack Obama creating a new New Deal. He almost said as much in today's Message from the President-Elect.
President-elect Barack Obama said Saturday that he has told his economic team to come up with a recovery plan focused on creating new jobs -- 2.5 million of them in the next three years to be exact.
In the Democratic Party's weekly radio address, Obama said that while the details are yet to be worked out, it will be a "two-year, nationwide effort to jumpstart job creation . . . and lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy."
Among the targets will be rebuilding roads and bridges and modernizing schools, along with "building wind farms and solar panels; fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead."
Sounds very 1930's. But what were the causes of the 1930's and have we learned our lesson? From the New York Times comes this view that the new deal of the 1930's didn't always work.
The traditional story is that President Franklin D. Roosevelt rescued capitalism by resorting to extensive government intervention; the truth is that Roosevelt changed course from year to year, trying a mix of policies, some good and some bad. It’s worth sorting through this grab bag now, to evaluate whether any of these policies might be helpful.
(Read article to see the analysis of the "grab bag.")
If you read the conclusion, lets hope that it doesn't take World War III to get us out of this funk.
Picture is of the Miami cheerleaders. Student support for athletic teams at the University of Miami is perhaps best exemplified by the longstanding tradition of fine cheerleading squads. Uniforms and cheers have changed over the years, as this photograph of UM cheerleaders practicing for an upcoming football game in the 1930's illustrates.