Keith Boykin from CNBC on Melissa Harris-Perry's show just said

Answer: Fuck no.

Bumperstickers with pictures of W and Hoover with that slogan would be cool.

tot he economy, Hoover later worked with Truman to rally support for the Marshal Plan and for emergency food relief for a starving Europe after WW2. I have just read about this in a fine new book called "The President's Club" about how former presidents worked with sitting presidents in times of great need and suffering.

The chapter on Hoover and Truman is the opener of the book and it is very well written and exciting. Everyone should read it...

I'll check it out.

of the white food bags that Europeans decorated and sent to him as a thank you for his help in feeding the hungary after the war. It was the part of the library that I liked the best. Visited the library when I lived in Iowa City.

Made me laugh.

Hungry = need food

Poster was just laughing at the typo, not your statement.

"What's wrong with violins on tv? Violins are a very nice instrument."

any huge natural disasters in the US since Bush left office. Even the recession happened on his watch.

No Katrinas so far, nothing. God must be on Obama's side. Or am I displeasing the atheists with that one?

Don't tell the people of the Schoharie Basin or the Northern Catskills this or the people in Indiana affected by tornadoes. To equate natural disasters with whomever is sitting in office is a false dichotomy. It's kind of akin to the televangenitals blaming the GLBT community for "natural" disasters.

If you are a victim, then they devastate your life. But they don't wreak the havoc that hurricane did. They don't harm so many lives.

We have always had severe tornadoes in the Midwest. The ones this year were not the very worst in history.

to the Schoharie Basin and those other areas in Upstate NY devastated last year by, first, Hurricane Irene and then, 10 days later by Tropical Storm Lee. Huge areas of not only Upstate NY, but VT, central PA and Northern NJ are going to take upwards of 5 - 10 years to recover or at least get back to a state of "new normalcy". I'm still doing many hours of work each week and so are hundreds of others. Just this past Thursday, two of our local Congresscritters were at an outdoor lunch to see what further measures can be taken. Our county is among the three poorest per capita in the state and I can tell you, that to us, it was just as devastating as Katrina was to NOLA. When you have a county of 30,000 population and over 2300 households are directly affected, that's harming a lot of lives. True, no lives were lost, but that is because of the tremendously heroic efforts of the first responders. Frankly, I feel that you are pooh-poohing the experience of our community.

BP oil spill ring a bell?

You think he didn't know what was about to hit? Mr Hoover was in the exact same position in '29 as Mr Obama in '09.

-- Mal

but the real estate bubble crash started in 27 I think. I wonder if Hoover could have done anything to stop the rampant stock speculation before the crash. He could have done a lot more after it though. He did build the Hoover Dam but that wasnt good enough stimulus for the entire nation. When Hoover took office unemploymnet was 4% but by 1932 it was 25% and the GDP -15% because he basically didnt do enough. He DID plead with big business tycoons to start hiring though! And he did pass the biggest peacetime tax increase in history in '32, the top rate going from 24% to 63%. After FDR put the New Deal stimulus into effect in '33, unemployment had dropped to 12% by 1936 and the GDp went as high as 7%!

Until Glass-Steagall, we had severe depressions and market crashes pretty regularly.

The Wikipedia article is, in my opinion, pretty careful not to step on right-wing toes on this:

Today the term "depression" is most often associated with the Great Depression of the 1930s, but the term had been in use long before then. Indeed, an early major American economic crisis, the Panic of 1819, was described by then-president James Monroe as "a depression", and the economic crisis immediately preceding the 1930s depression, the Depression of 1920–21, was referred to as a "depression" by president Calvin Coolidge.

However, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, financial crises were traditionally referred to as "panics", e.g., the 'major' Panic of 1907, and the 'minor' Panic of 1910–1911, though the 1929 crisis was more commonly called "The Crash", and the term "panic" has since fallen out of use. At the time of the Great Depression (of the 1930s), the phrase "The Great Depression" had already been used to refer to the period 1873–96 (in the United Kingdom), or more narrowly 1873–79 (in the United States), which has since been renamed the Long Depression.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_%28economics%29

The article I quoted from above gives an overview, but in some ways, I think it was memory of the "panic" of the 1870s that led to the end of the social horrors of the Gilded Age and the reforms under Teddy Roosevelt. Wikipedia more specifically on this:

The Panic of 1873 triggered a severe international economic depression in both Europe and the United States that lasted until 1879, and even longer in some countries. The depression was known as the Great Depression until the 1930s, but is now known as the Long Depression. The panic was caused by the fall in demand for silver internationally, which followed Germany's decision to abandon the silver standard in the wake of the Franco-Prussian war.

In 1871, Otto von Bismarck extracted a large indemnity in gold from France and ceased minting silver thaler coins. The first symptoms of the crisis were financial failures in the Austro-Hungarian capital, Vienna, which spread to most of Europe and North America by 1873. It was one of a series of economic crises in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In Britain, the result was two decades of stagnation known as the "Long Depression", which weakened Britain's economic leadership in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1873

The role of the Austrian (Empire's) economic meltdown in both the Panic of the 1870s and the Great Depression is interesting.

Check it out.

This triggers the thought in me that forcing the European countries to pay the impossible amounts that our irresponsible banks loaned to them could set off another huge depression, one from which we would not easily recover. This is a great danger.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be. At least keep the borrowing and lending within rational limits. Goes for both the lender and the borrower. (To quote another dead horse: Takes two to tango. In other words, when debts cannot be repaid, lenders are as much at fault as borrowers in my view.)

Even the name association was too much for her. Hoover may have been a decent EX-President, but he was a disaster in office. I don't know if George W. could truly be called a "successful businessman." He failed at everything he tried except for The Texas Rangers which was a money maker because taxpayers funded the new ballpark. That's the only way George W. EVER achieved anything ... taxpayer funded.

Being a limited government guy, they were on a small scale, and had little effect. However, when FDR ramped them up on steroids, they did work.

wasn't Bush Sr. a businessman?

businessmen.. sure

atleast H.W. wasnt as massive of a failure on that front as his son was, i suppose... granted he got the job the same way his son did (by asking daddy for it). lol.


its like i heard on bill maher the other night,

the republicans of today make you long for people like H.W....

which should say alot about our current political atmosphere

His father was, but he was a CIA guy.

(1) Do NOT go with "Rmoney destroyed jobs while at Bain” – because sometimes he created jobs, and lots of time he destroyed jobs. BUT he always - ALWAYS - worked to help himself and his fellow 1% get richer ... no matter who else suffered.

(2) America already tried a MBA president. How's that working out for you all?

or a corporation. It is not designed to create a profit for only a few.

or corporation there's a different word to describe it.

Somehow the low information voters have picked up the meme that it needs to be run like a business. Obama and the Dems need to clarify what the hell the role of government is. Those who want it out of the way so businesses can make unfettered profit do a disservice to the masses. Government is about the people, not the corporations. If it was run like a business then we'd have no services whatsoever because they "cost" money. Anything not related to allowing corporations to make profits would be eliminated.

Even if the Obama campaign won't pick it up, some creative person should rap it, sing it, chant it. That's how you chip at Romney's game.

I have been waiting ten years for someone to make this point. Running a government and running a business are not the same thing. One exists to produce profit, and one exists to break even.

Why the Dems don't keep hammering this home is baffling to me. They have bought into the Republican's rhetoric that government is bad. No it is not. Government can be very, very good. Set up the dichotomy without hesitation. We believe in government. We believe in the power of the people to govern themselves. Government is us. We are the government. I'd rather us be in charge than a corporation.

He worked for non-profits or the government from 1914 until he retired. He was considered a humanitarian in WW I and Wilson appointed him to oversee food distribution during the war. Both Wilson and FDR wanted Hoover to run for president in 1920 as a Democrat. After WW II Truman appointed him to oversee relief and food for people in the former Nazi occupied areas of Europe.

He was involved with several companies and did quite well. Which is the reason that he could afford to work in the non-profit sector and become a humanitarian.

a businessman, though some erroneously think that being a farmer and marketing your production is not a busines.

welcome to DU

And the President has already made the point that, unlike MBAs and CEOs, his goal isn't to maximize profits but to look out for the well-being of ALL citizens. I hope he makes that point again and again and again.

First of all, Hoover earned his entire fortune, W inheirited his. Hoover authored many books on a variety of subjects ranginging from mining to fly-fishing; there is no evidence that W even read a book. Hoover did attempt to correct the depression with works projects, and raised taxes on the wealthy and corporations to pay for them (being of a balanced budget school of thought). Yes, too little, too late, but at that time there wasn't precedent for dealing with major economic collapse. W took a booming economy and drove it over a cliff. After office, Hoover continued to assist the government, both Dem and Rep; W lays around the house pounding vodka.

All in all, IMO Hoover gets an unfair bad rap. While not one of the best presidents, he certainly doesn't deserved to be ranked at the bottom. OTOH, W must certainly be ranked among the 3 or 4 worst presidents.

He failed miserably, but he tried.

W. didn't give a damn about anyone but W.
Not then.
Not now.
Not never.