The Lessons of History

As with most of my derivative (read: Me too! Me too!), I get my material from Hot Air! Regularly, Ed and the crew point us to the stellar work done by Mike Ramirez:

..but most of the real value comes in surveying the comments where you can come up with some interesting tidbits if not some outright gems.

One of the pervasive mantras that has been thrown in our face since we all walked around in out pampers (well, actual cloth diapers in my case) has been that FDR was an almost Obama-like demigod who stemmed the tide of a vicious economic reality and presided over the salvation of this nation up to the Second World War.

The internet abounds with examples of how fraudulent this theory is -- even including the tenet that his administration(s) policies may have actually extended the depression instead of healing it. One such commenter -- WashJeff over on HA! (reference lost) points out that the returning vets from World War One fomented an economic depression that the POTUS of the day had to resolve and apparently did so adroitly:

Depression of 1920-1921
When President Harding assumed office on March 4, 1921 the United States was in the midst of a post war economic depression. By 1920, unemployment had jumped up to 12 percent and the GNP had dropped by 17 percent. Harding ignored Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover's recommendation for proactive federal intervention; rather Harding cut tax rates for all groups and reduced the national debt. Recovery began to take place in summer of 1921; by 1922 unemployment receded to 6.4 percent; by 1923 the unemployment rate was 2.4 percent. Economist Benjamin Anderson writes, "In 1920–21 we [the U.S.] took our losses, we readjusted our financial structure, we endured our depression, and in August 1921 we started up again. . . . The rally in business production and employment that started in August 1921 was soundly based on a drastic cleaning up of credit weakness, a drastic reduction in the costs of production, and on the free play of private enterprise. It was not based on governmental policy designed to make business good.”

..those who do not remember history are bound to..

MATERIALLY IMPORTANT UPDATE: Per Odie's request:

..oh, what the hell, Odie, let's live a little, shall we?