Obama's New Deal

The last year and the recent presidential election scare the hell out of me.  I am a clinical psychologist/author who thinks something really crazy is occurring in America.  It is something akin to a cultural delusion.  It appears that a majority of Americans are attempting to escape the unpleasantness of reality by ignoring the obvious problem at hand.  That problem is the steadily growing lack of fiscal and moral responsibility that is exemplified by our current president and those who are on his side. 

Many people I know are avoiding the obvious by arguing that the current president and his administration have done a partially good job and will complete what has been started in his next administration.  Some Americans accept this point of view without question.  Most refuse to look at all.  

In order to understand what has happened, people need to understand that in the first two years of President Obama’s presidency, he and his congress tried to copy FDR’s New Deal that was supposed to fix the great depression.  Obama and his cohorts did a very poor job of it with their greedy stimulus package and lack of transparency.  They were obviously dishonest. 

Obama took the same course as the New Deal of the 1930’s that lasted for about twelve years.  The reasons it lasted so long are clearly described in two books: one called The Forgotten Man and another called FDR’s Folly. History has been kind to Roosevelt in the thirties and only now, many years later, has it become known that the great depression was extended for many years because of FDR’s policies of bigger government, political favoritism coupled with a patronage system and outright dishonesty.  There was even another depression of almost the same intensity in the late thirties that was not covered by the media.

The Obama administration has pursued those same new deal policies and the result has been a recession that has lasted 4 years to date.  Most recessions/depressions end much quicker than that. Only FDR’s New Deal lasted longer and it resulted in war.  If Obama is re-elected he will pursue those same failed policies. The result clearly will be an extended recession/depression with the real possibility of another crash.  Obama and his cohorts have not learned from history.  Remember it was John Maynard Keynes who said, “madmen in authority distil their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”