If you want to change the rules of business try doing it before you cock the whole system up! This isn’t about America or Daniel Hannan; it’s about idiots like you that back them no matter what!

Oh and by the way, a vast majority of the upper crust bods in this country loved Hitlers ways. The 1930s were notorious for it; ask any Jew!

If you make a claim about America spending its way out of recession perhaps you should try do a little research into the words of FDR’s own treasury secretary Henry Morganthau who wrote:

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong…somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises…I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started…And an enormous debt to boot!”

http://www.danielhannanforcongress.com

As for American Nazi sympathisers. . . .

To be honest, it’s not unreasonable to expect that before the war, many people believed in the fascist ideal and many notable Americans perhaps foolishly made their thoughts public (Charles Linburgh, Charlie Chaplin . . . ).

America itself had, and probably still has but to a much lesser extent, a huge fear of Communism that led to the Cold War years – and whats at the other end of the curve from Communism? Fascism.

Neville Chamberlain famously tried to appease Hitler and whilst his overtures may have been to avoid taking our country to war again, he can be seen as in some ways ‘sympathetic’ to Hitlers arguments about heavy, crippling workd war one reparations placed on Germany and French military control of German soil etc etc.

However, whether or not Bush’s family (or Kennedy’s family for that matter, as Joseph Kennedy made odd statements about supporting Hitler) had true fascist leaning tendencies, I’m pretty sure they changed rapidly after the events of World War Two properly unfolded, particularly with the holocaust.

There’s a huge amount of documented evidence that shows how Wall Street enabled the Wehrmacht to be rebuilt, that effectively funded Hitlers industry for War – but that’s an age old story of business before er, despotic dipleasure.

Most of the guns still fired at American troops maybe Russian made, but most of the misslies aint. America is well known for supplying and training their enemy (see Osama Bin Laden) then act all surprised when the heavily armed menace turns on them . . . . .

Politics is an easily bought game, only those of us who aren’t Politicians can afford to actually have beliefs, morals and values that we standby.

Erm, no he didn’t: “and that you have subsidised – where you have not nationalised outright – swathes of our economy, including the car industry and many of the banks.”

Congratulations Dan – great speech in content and presentation. This is the most incompetent government we have ever had. For years Brown gloated in parliament ‘No more boom and bust’.

Right-wing people are very bad.
Any bad act commited by a right-winger reflects badly on all right-wingers.
Left-wing people are very good.
Any bad act commited by a left-winger is a result of them being right-wing.
Any bad act commited by a right-winger reflects on all right-wingers.
Therefore crimes commited by, for example, Stalin, Mao, Mugabe, etc, are crimes commited by the right-wingers.

“Left-wing” and “Good” are interchangeable terms. By definition, it is not possible to be left-wing and bad.

Shit ,there were people in the SS who weren’t in the Nazi party.

“John Loftus, is a former US attorney who prosecuted Nazi war criminals in the 70s. Now living in St Petersburg, Florida and earning his living as a security commentator for Fox News and ABC radio, Loftus is working on a novel which uses some of the material he has uncovered on Bush. Loftus stressed that what Prescott Bush was involved in was just what many other American and British businessmen were doing at the time.

“You can’t blame Bush for what his grandfather did – bought Nazi stocks – but what is important is the cover-up, how it could have gone on so successfully for half a century, and does that have implications for us today?” he said.

“This was the mechanism by which Hitler was funded to come to power, this was the mechanism by which the Third Reich’s defence industry was re-armed, this was the mechanism by which Nazi profits were repatriated back to the American owners, this was the mechanism by which investigations into the financial laundering of the Third Reich were blunted,” said Loftus, who is vice-chairman of the Holocaust Museum in St Petersburg.

“The Union Banking Corporation was a holding company for the Nazis, for Fritz Thyssen,” said Loftus. “At various times, the Bush family has tried to spin it, saying they were owned by a Dutch bank and it wasn’t until the Nazis took over Holland that they realised that now the Nazis controlled the apparent company and that is why the Bush supporters claim when the war was over they got their money back. Both the American treasury investigations and the intelligence investigations in Europe completely bely that, it’s absolute horseshit. They always knew who the ultimate beneficiaries were.”
“There is no one left alive who could be prosecuted but they did get away with it,” said Loftus. “As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averill Harriman [to be prosecuted] for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany.”

Bush does not have a very good record for telling the truth

“ Rumors about the alleged Nazi ‘ties’ of the late Prescott Bush … have circulated widely through the internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated. Despite some early financial dealings between Prescott Bush and a Nazi industrialist named Fritz Thyssen (who was arrested by the Nazi regime in 1938 and imprisoned during the war), Prescott Bush was neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathizer.[6][12]

Your Churchill trusted Stalin over FDR. The crazy far far far far lefty over the liberal. Sally, I was enjoying speaking with adults….”your welcome”

Never, ever mistake me saying that a war is a justifiable reason to reduce unemployment. It was an unintended result of the war, not a economic theory. I gave you too much credit.

Well it is not as simple as you make it sound. First and foremost Republicans strongly supported Hitler in the 1930s. Bush’s Grandfather was making a fortune trading with the Nazis. Go and read the Right wing papers of the time. Second, it was the Democrats who wanted to come and help Europe, but Republicans did not. FDR could not get them on board because they were mostly isolationists. You only came into the war in 1941 when you got attacked at Pear Harbour.

Still ,better late than never.

The over-population problem is real, though. The evidence is that before a population will voluntarily limit its reproduction to replacement level it has to reach the living standard of, say, Russia. The planet doesn’t have enough resources to do sustain the projected mid-century population at that level, even if as much of it remains habitable as there is to-day – which is unlikely, to say the least. This is an altogether bigger problem than the actions of particular governments, deplorable as the examples you cite are. FWIW the Romans managed to turn the North African littoral from a breadbasket to a dustbowl without even having heard of socialism, let alone practising it!

Sorry for my delay as well. Honestly, was more comfortable discussing the economic impact of our Bushes and Clinton that media matters with a someone who is very comfortable with the subject. Had to replace my computer and well, do some real work.

Ben, I guess we will have to agree to disagree on what is a MAJOR media outlet….tabloids?, A few million combined? Largest newspaper? (Ben, people are not reading newspapers anymore…they are going out of business) Venezuelan coup?

The reduction of the right wing Venezuelan media due to Chavez is just an example of what happens when the left wing is in charge…Cuba, USSR, China, Cambodia, etc.

Our left is considering “The Fairness Doctrine” which is designed to force our talk radio, which is dominated by the right, to offer equal shows left=right. “Air America” is just horrible programming with boring and sort of out of touch (even more than Limbaugh) with reality, has stolen public funds from a youth group so it has been a failure. Liberals already have almost all of the TV stations, and education. They want to silence the right on radio as well.

As far as Sarkozy. He may be right wing to you, the indicted Chirac, and Royal. Royal was so far left that she did not get any play with even the US liberals. Sarkozy is pro affirmative action, pro protectionism, and still appears to want a centralized EU authority (which confuses me with the protectionism). Hardy what I, admitted conservative, and US centrists would call “right wing”. Right of the socialist party for sure.

As far as his relationship with the press, well, it is a concern. His advertisement scandal. Need more info on that for sure. I’ve unaware of it here in the states. In the states we used to call CNN the Clinton News Network. His cronies are all over TV now pretending to be impartial.

You should be more concerned with the actual content of the news. For years, liberals fired that NBC was biased right because they were owned by General Electric, who is, among other things, is a military hardware manufacturer. They reasoned that therefore, they would not rail against the party in power that paid for the hardware. WRONG.

Brian Williams, NBC today show with Matt Lauer and Katy Couric, sorry, the coverage just did not support the argument. Matter of fact, the CEO of GE is on Obama’s Economic Recovery Board. GE stock has lost 80% of its value since he became CEO, and one of his divisions has done business with the Iranian military. He is one of the reasons the country needs an Economic Recovery Board.

Back to the BBC…it took them days to report the Hannan speech. The views of them caving and actually reporting the NEWS since it is a NEWS organization was shared by more than one member of your blog. I checked the first three articles you posted as evidence of the Iraq reporting. The Arab Times, Salon and Amnesty Int’l. Sorry, the outlets don’t inspire truthful confidence in me although I am glad Amnesty Int’l exists. As far as it being biased for the ruling establishment…no they are biased against the right.

Bush has been criticized for his spending by Sean Hannady (FOX), Bill O’Reilly (FOX), Lou Dobbs (CNN), Rush Limbaugh (Radio), former republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanon (MSNBC)…I don’t know how else to convince you.

Can’t believe the guy who wrote the first paragraph wrote the rest of the post. Extortion, murder? I just spoke to some of our older US WWII vets at the gym- water aerobics for them, yoga for me- they say “your welcome.” I really don’t have to argue the merits of the US before, during or after WWII in Europe with you do I? You thoroughly and unsuccessfully twisted the fact that it took almost ten years after the New Deal was implemented, to actually see real (non-artificial) sustained economic growth and low unemployment. That’s a lot of time.

Conversely, your classic argument on why socialism finds its wind in these type of times makes total sense. Pure idialogical capitalism without common sense controls and pure socialist where there is no private property are clearly not the answer and its something in which we can agree.

For the record- retirees or those close to retirement have responsibility to change their stock portfolio- reducing variable % for fixed due to the lack of risk tolerance. It is their responsibility. I feel for these people and know many of them, including a 71 year old man who has been retired for over a decade that has taken a job as a consultant. Now they face inflation with the misguided acts of our new president, further reducing their retirement value.

As far as feeding the Earth I must disagree with you. As our baby boomers get older, they will either have too work until they are 80 or we need more PRODUCTIVE WORKING citizens to prop up our failing state sponsored retirement funds. I’m all for non-productive people not adding to our welfare rolls. Birth control and female education in developing countries is a must. I doubt you would agree but your population argument would lead me to believe that the AIDS disaster in Africa actually benefits the world.

Food for the world-

A quick look at two African countries- Zimbabwe- A country rich in agriculture- the farms were stolen by the left wing government and given to people who did not know how to produce (Mugabe cronies). Needless to say, they went from a net exporter of food with most of the indigenous people having jobs to a country starving with massive seven+ digit inflation. The opposition even won the election but had to negotiate a governing settlement. Foreign media outlets are not allowed inside. Bad place.

Conversely, Zambia gave land to the expelled farmers, who extended their knowledge to local tribesman, who also were given credit to purchase land- personal responsibility is very important to them, they paid back the loans and Zambia is now a net exporter of produce.

The Ukraine used to have some of Europe’s most fertile country. Ask them what collectivism did for them. The Soviets stole their food numerous times causing millions to starve.- Left wingers think that somehow that because there is no private property that the public owns everything- Nope- the government does. The government decides what it wants to do with your food and there is no freedom. Chernobyl, a public owned utility that was not subject to any scrutiny- made formerly fertile land worthless.

Silly government officials encouraging private companies to produce energy out of rice and corn (very low BTU values as compared to sugar, coal, or petroleum) artificially inflating the price so that the poor can not afford them, creating another problem of which they can heroically cite socialism as their saving grace.

I could go on and on.

Thank you for your kind words.

And no, I have never argued that recessions are not inevitable. No one worries that growth in some years is faster than others (most recent recessions have been no more than that, a slowing of the growth rate) – as you say, this one is different. Ultimately, of course, if growth continues for long enough – and even if we turn to solar power for everything we can’t lift by human hand – there will more people on the planet than it can feed.

What we really need to get a handle on is the problem of greed and the idea that buying things can make us feel better. To prove that this need not always be so, you have only to consider the guy who’s newly retired. His income has perhaps halved (or more) yet the reason people find retirement sometimes hard to cope with is not the loss of income but the loss of meaning that their work gave them. It’s certainly true that neither free-marketeers (of any stripe) nor socialists (with a few honourable yet marginalised exceptions) have got to grips with this. The only people who have are MacIntyrean conservatives who think the Enlightenment was a disaster for humanity. However, their only idea is to wring their hands in despair/horror – which doesn’t take us very far.

1: “Hannan claims Brown has nationalised the car industry. Erm, no it hasn’t.” no he pointed out that the car industry is now being heavily subsidised. Not nationalised.

2: “So not only is he directly blaming Gordon Brown for the private job losses (not financial companies, mind you) but also blaming him for creating “unproductive” teaching, nursing and other public sector jobs! I’m sure my cousin will be happy to hear the Tories regard her teaching job as unproductive. And damn them for creating jobs!” – for a start you are now letting your cousins job make your argument sound patheticly emotive. Then there is the fact that he does not blame Gordon Brown directly in his speech, i dont remember him saying “thanks to you sacking 100,000 private sector workers in the past 12 months…” And finaly the public sector is unproductive as it uses, not makes, money which is what you realy want in a reccesion. Besides with the £20,000 of debt for every child born, enough to EDUCATE them for life, i dont see how you can justify the minimal improvement in education now (considering it takes a couple of years to go on a teacher training course, police training and even longer to become a nurse, the of people qualified for these jobs in the 30000 lucky souls who were given new public sector jobs in these areas is going to be exceptionaly small, the others will be shipped off to work in quango’s and other wasteful areas) for the complete disruption of the education of future generations when there is the ineviatable restructuring of the massive debt brown has accumilated. Probably under the “nasty torries.”

3: “He also decries the fall of the Sterling. To read a proper demolition of why the Sterling’s fall IS A GOOD THING” well no it isnt really. It may make our exports a bit more competative and that is a good thing to be sure, but the strong pound allowed the cheaper inport of materials which allowed the most efficent (and therefor the most worthy) industries to survive. If the weak pound really was helping that much any way why has so much industry been receiving subsidies? The weak pound is also a sign of a lack of confidence in the UK economey and this is disasterous. Investment is drying up because the UK has so much debt and people do not trust countries with this much debt not to defualt on it. If we got reduced to a lower credit rating than our current AAA we would end up paying even more interest on this debt and if the IMF had to bail us out it would come with very strict conditions attatched to bring debt under controll and reduce the states spending so you can wave those 30,000 new jobs good bye any way.

Cassandrina – I am not a fan of the “stimulus”, but what of the counterfactual?
Exactly how much better, or worse, would unemployment have been without the spending?

Just a few short notes as I still have not had the time to respond to Ben and Katwala at the same time since they both have responded to my previous posts. I have to be more careful with them.

#84 Mike- Thankfully, Lend, Lease (aka your money) strengthened our industry and sadly, our war dead took the place of unemployment. I would imagine that the war also resulted in national pride and politicians actually acting for the betterment of the country rather than to just get themselves reelected.

Mike also note that recessions are inevetible. During times of great prosperity, prices, compensation, etc rise but at some point the economic system can’t support auto workers sleeping on the job and getting overtime to finish the job they did not working 9-5, bankers having prime rib, Cuban cigars, and brandy at lunch, ordinary workers flying business class, $400,000 home mortgages for carpenter’s assistants, etc. Recessions normally get rid the waste and unnecessary spending. NORMALLY. This one is a little different but you get the idea.

Getting out of recessions is also inevitable. In the states, home sales were way up last month, we had a ~16% increase in the Dow the last few weeks after the news that Citi, a private banking company made money the first few months of the year. Even with the stimulus” (fraud) not even hitting the streets yet. Job losses are below predictions…which is not perfect as job losses are still job losses, but the market wishes for some level of predictability and it looks like we getting a handle on this in the states, just months after it started.

The New Deal was enacted in 1933. It ended in the states during the war. That’s an awful long time.

I think I’m in love But you’re wasting your time arguing with Right Wingers as you are spot on with your assessment about them rewriting history.

According to some in this thread, amazingly Bush is a Liberal. Hmmmmmm. Find that so hard to stomach after his crimes against humanity.

anyway, I wont rehash their silly arguments, you only have to look at the amount of ‘impeach Obama’ video’s on youtube. There are people taking to the streets in their er, tens and twenties waving placards inexplicably stating ‘No more War Obama!’ and ‘Bring our Troops home!’

um . . . Just who started these wars where America’s poor die in embarrassingly high numbers??? I’m sure it was Bush but, ah I must be reading the wrong history book and my own memory is slightly corrupt.

Just like the econonmic crisis, it’s all Obama’s fault for buying a dog . . or something equally insane, nothing whatosever to do with the fat cat lobbyists, cronies and nepotistic management of Bush and Co stuffing their own pockets whilst encouraging deregulation on an unprecedented scale. Nah, that’s got nowt to do with this! It’ sthe price of dog food at the Whitehouse thats bleeding America dry.

This post just leaves me open to abuse, I will now be either an ‘angry’ lefty’ or a ‘bleeding heart liberal’ but you know what? I’d rather be both of those than a callous, greedy, ignorant and, in some cases, inhumane bastard – which pretty much sums up most Republican/Conservatives I know across both sides of the pond.

As I say, Sally, you’re my hero for persisting with these deluded folk but take a step back and remember, for the past eight years, Liberals have been ‘gagged at the back of the bus’ thanks to Bush’s ‘you’re either with us or against us’ mantra that so stoked up the red neck gun club. Now, it’s their turn to make loud noises at the back, because at least for four more years (hopefully eight) no one cares what the loony Fascists think.

Oh and to get back on topic, Hannan is nothing but a Thatcherite posing as a realist whose words have hit the magic button with rednecks, that’s all. It’s not even that impressive a speech (honestly, listen to it again!)

A quote from Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury in 1939 says it all –

“We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get jobs. We have never made good on our promises.
I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot.”

I rest this case.