How Fox News is fueling their talking point machine to undermine Obama's FDR-like intentions and what you need to know to counter it.
So Fox News is already at it. Having failed to tie Obama to any unethical behavior concerning the Blagojevich scandal, their next talking point is to suggest that the kind of FDR-inspired public works programs that Obama has stated he is willing to engage in is doomed to failure because according to "most historians" FDR's New Deal policies didn't actually help the economy recover. Of course, their historians are not really historians and are more accurately described as "economists" and "most" actually means a handful of free market economists who are bitter about the success of the New Deal and who are frightened about the looming New New Deal and what it means to their precious theory. Even current Fed Chairman, Ben Bernancke (hardly a "socialist") concedes that New Deal economic policies like the creation of the FDIC and the SEC (when it is doing it's job properly) are indispensible entities that have steered us from any Depressions since the 1930's.
Being that, unfortunately, most of what economists say goes over the heads of the vast majority of Americans and, thus, we ascribe some sort of magical power to their wisdom it will do us some good to dismantle some myths about them. What most people fail to realize about "economists" is that they're no different than those who ascribe to a particular religion. They view the world through the prism of an ideology and very few regard seeking the "truth" as their ultimate goal but, instead, seek the implementation of their ideology as their true purpose. When their ideology is rejected but still the economy recovers or performs well they begin to engage in some rewriting of history to dispell the seeming success of policies based in an ideology that counters their own. The Fox News prism is "free market capitalism". When free market capitalism fails (as it did during the Depression and our current predicament) they begin by blaming everything else BUT the failures of the market to regulate itself or ensure consumer confidence as the rationale for that failure. When a free market economist looks at the history of their Great Depression, their job is to dismantle the effects the "socialistic-inspired" economic policies of FDR had on the eventual economic recovery and attributed success to other factors (just like they ignore free market failures and attribute failure to other factors when free market policies do not work out). Anyone can be an economist, it doesn't require an adherence to truth, it requires an ASSUMPTION of truth based on a pre-ascribed ideology. Friedrich Engels was an economist. I'm sure his take on the New Deal would have been very different than those at Fox News.
An economist will often look at raw data to make a point or to dismantle one that rejects their own ideology. They'll look at figures but they'll ignore facts. Fact is is that during the beginning of the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover was doing very little on a grand scale to inspire any kind of confidence in the market. This is similar to the tact taken by George Bush and it's effects will be blatantly exposed when the fourth quarter financial reports come in especially for retailers. My grandmother would explain to me that under Hoover, most Americans just would not or could not part with even a dollar if it was not absolutely necessary. If clothes were worn out, they were mended. If food was expensive, you grew your own. My grandmother developed many of her spend thrift habits during the Depression which often led to some of my favorite memories of my time with her. I remember spending many hours in the late summer and early fall snapping peas and canning other vegetables. Such is the lifestyle of one generation that lived for practicality while others since have lived for convenience.
Most economist won't bother to ask my Grandmother or others from her generation what the New Deal meant to their way of viewing the market and their place in it. We have a similar crisis of confidence now as we did then. The issue is not whether or not we DO, in fact, lose our jobs or even homes. The vast majority of us will not. It is the fear that we might. During the Depression, my grandparents never lost work but they knew plenty of people who did and that knowledge frightened them into conservative spending habits. As aforementioned, not only would they not purchase very many unnecessary items, they would not even dare stick their money in the bank, let alone the stock market. We now have a whole nation of people who have cut down on Christmas and many people not seeking to take on any additional credit to buy cars or homes (if they would even qualify). Once again, people FEEL that they may lose a job and then their homes or cars even though most will not. And in a market like the US (one that depends on consumer spending to make up two-thirds of that market) it is much more about how people FEEL that attributes to how much and when they will spend money and not on facts and figures about what is or is not going on.
Relying strictly on economists, who each have an agenda, to determine what policies will inspire confidence is like relying on a psychologists to tell you which stocks to purchase. Economists are often paid by the very same people whose job it is theirs to criticize. There is a conflict of interest in addition to an inability to look at the big picture beyond numbers that inhibits their ability to make sound judgements about most of what they speak about.
So when Fox News starts indulging in the rhetoric about the assumed fallacy of the New Deal policies, remember that their ultimate agenda is to uphold a "free market" ideology no matter what. FDR didn't care about a specific ideology, he cared that people felt that if their government was willing to go that extra mile for them, they should go that extra mile for the market and start spending again. Now is Obama's opportunity to do the same despite whatever faulty historic rhetoric and intentionally misguided talking point that Fox News and other conservative outlets try to use to undermine those goals. This is not about protecting "sacred" ideologies that we may have allowed to rule our thinking. This is about finding a way to manage a mass panic that could lead to mass hysteria. It is about getting ourselves and our neighbors to begin buying stuff we don't need again so that any market at all can continue to exist.