Franklin Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address: A Fitting Reminder For Our Crisis Today
by ilene - January 16th, 2010 2:10 am
Franklin Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address: A Fitting Reminder For Our Crisis Today
Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain
I remember my grandmother telling me how she and her family listened to this speech on the radio, in the dark days in the depths of the Great Depression. It is still hard for us now to appreciate how desperate and fearful the people were then. We think that we know, but most of us do not genuinely understand. How can we?
"Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone."
I never read it in full, but like most people just remember the famous quote about fear.
It’s worth reading this. It shows a mindset in terrible, overwhelming times that was determined to set things right, not to take care of business, but to address the business of the people directly, and not only the immediate concerns of the crisis but the long term problems that caused the financial collapse in meaningful ways.
Ways, I should add, that stood the test of time until they were overturned in the 1990′s by the efficient markets ideology and a multi-million dollar lobbying effort by Wall Street.
"There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly. Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people’s money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency."
Compare these words with those of the current president, and his slowness to respond with effective reform, and the ordering of his priorities. Does Obama do anything that is not first vetted by the corporate status quo? The most elite elements of the American establishment engaged in a plot to overthrow the Roosevelt administration,…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site