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The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act provided refinancing help for farmers facing foreclosure.
Despite its flaws, failures and setbacks, FDR's New Deal was remarkable in what it accomplished - mirror opposite of Obama's betrayal, selling out to wealth and power interests at the expense of public need. In contrast, New Deal initiatives put millions back to work, reinvigorated the national spirit, built or renovated 700,000 miles of roads, 7,800 bridges, 45,000 schools, 2,500 hospitals, 13,000 parks and playgrounds, 1,000 airfields, and other infrastructure projects, including Chicago's lakefront.
It cut unemployment from 25% in May 1933 to 11% in 1937, before spiking after Roosevelt declared victory too soon. War production then restored economic growth, created full employment, and ended the Great Depression.
Overall, Roosevelt revived a sick economy. Obama's policies wrecked it by shunning massive job creation programs. Instead, he looted the Treasury for Wall Street, stresses warmaking over domestic stimulus, and ignores public need, except small measures like temporarily extending unemployment insurance, several tax credits, and adjusting the alternative minimum tax.
Longtime market analyst/insider Bob Chapman said despite trillions of Fed QE, the economy is "barely to the plus side....Only the speculators in banking and on Wall Street are having a good time. This is the same monetary and fiscal management that was witnessed in the late 1920s. Credit growth and financial flows increased exponentially." America, European, and other "economies are making the same mistakes, thus, no one is going to escape....It is not going to be pretty as prices rise, wages stagnate and unemployment grows." Counterproductive measures "can only mean worse results in the end." Growing problems look increasingly insurmountable, bad policies exacerbating, not relieving, them.
Economist David Rosenberg says "the bond market (is) signal(ing) that there is no commitment in the United States to get its fiscal house in order....It remains to be seen if a temporary move to reduce payroll taxes" gives the economy life. "By definition, people only alter their behavior based on changes to their income, wealth and job situation that are considered to be permanent."
The 2008 tax rebates were "fleeting" and ineffective. The "hyperbole" about Obama's "fiscal package is amazing - USA Today said it's a "sweeping tax deal." Moody's Mark Zandi called it "a game-changer." Rosenberg said "have mercy on me, please. If there is a game-changer, it is that we supposedly have a new Congress that got elected on fiscal probity."
Obama's compromise adds $984 billion to the deficit through 2012. "Yet there is nothing here that resolves either the ongoing crisis in housing or employment." At best, maybe people with extended unemployment insurance "will be able to turn up the heat....middle class (recipients) will be able to fill their tanks" at higher prices, and rich folks already have plenty to do as they please, and don't need more they'll save, not spend.
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