Republican depressions, Democratic capitulations

In the past century, we have had:

1. The Great Depression, caused largely by Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon along with tensions between the Fed and the New York Fed, and exacerbated by the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, officially hit the fan under Herbert Hoover, but stock speculation plus farm belt recession was already entrenched under Calvin Coolidge.

FDR did do a fair amount to alleviate it, aided by Marriner Eccles at the Fed, Harry Hopkins and Harold Ickes with relief efforts, and Henry Wallace at Ag. But, he himself, as shown by his 1932 campaign against Hoover, was at heart a fiscal conservative in many ways, and turning off the pump-priming in 1937 led to another dip. In addition, with delayed payments on the Social Security system and other things, the system wasn't fixed that well.

Result? Per that chart, unemployment remained above 14 percent the entire decade. That's contra an implication by Ted Rall that the 25 percent peak was kind of a blip and thus OHMYGOD the coronavirus is worse. Yes, he does say that for "most of the Depression the unemployment rate averaged around 15 percent." That still sells it short. Because, in reality, for ALL of the Depression and even into alleged recovery times, it averaged about 15 percent. In reality, per these year-by-year numbers in text, beyond that, for all of 1931-36, five years straight, it averaged above 16 percent. And for four straight years, 1932-35, it averaged above 20 percent. And it went back to 19 percent in 1938, plus, after steady to strong growth in the GDP from 1934 on, the economy contracted again that year.

(It's not the first time I've questioned Rall's use of economics numbers.)

2. The Great Recession, caused largely by Shrub Bush, along with Fed head Alan Greenspan, who never should have been running the Fed in general, let alone 20 years straight, goosing the economy too much after 9/11 and then not restraining it quicker.

Barack Obama famously did the first post-presidential compromising the compromise away in advance in public when he pegged the stimulus at below $1 trillion. He also caved in by silence when (shades of the first paragraph) New York Fed head Lil Timmy Geithner refused to take direct action against some of the larger banks' grifting.

3. And now, we have what could be the Trump Depression and will surely be the Trump Recession. (The first quarter will likely have an economic contraction, if we haven't already determined that, and the second quarter surely will, thus meeting the official recession definition.)

Assuming Joseph R. Biden is elected (and yes, Dems, shut up, that's an assumption; look back to 2016), does anybody think he'll do even as well as Obama, let alone as well as FDR?

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Side note — for anybody wondering whether or not the Great Recession was worse than the Carter-Reagan double-dip? It's arguable that, although income inequality wasn't as bad, the mix of the high inflation in the Carter half, plus the Paul Volcker pain in the Reagan half, means it was still worse. And I remember it.

Side note No. 2 —Look at the Panic of 1893 period. Note that the high unemployment actually covered not only all of Grover Cleveland's second presidency but most of William McKinley's first term. Arguably this was the second-greatest economic catastrophe in American history.

Side note No. 3 — the unemployment info doesn't go back to the Panic of 1873 or its aftermath. That said, I don't think it was as acutely bad as any of these others, but it did have the pains of drawn-out deflation.