If it took a severe credit crunch to get the entitlement americans to change.... "change".... would it be worth it?
No more house you can't afford, 2 SUV's, all fancy new clothes, 2 vacations per yer, dining out 3 nights per week, private college for the kids, wide screen plasma TV, cell phone for the pre-teens etc. etc. etc.
Oh, but Michelle Obama says Americans are worse off today than they were 30 years ago when the kinds were playing PONG on a jacked up Atari, and crammed in the back of the family station wagon for the trip to disney world once every few years.
No more house you can't afford, 2 SUV's, all fancy new clothes, 2 vacations per yer, dining out 3 nights per week, private college for the kids, wide screen plasma TV, cell phone for the pre-teens etc. etc. etc.
Oh, but Michelle Obama says Americans are worse off today than they were 30 years ago when the kinds were playing PONG on a jacked up Atari, and crammed in the back of the family station wagon for the trip to disney world once every few years.
My vote in Virginia is one of the most meaningful states out there. We are a swing state in case you didn't notice, and there are lots of high school kids campaigning for Obama... you know, kids who have never payed taxes in their lifetime... that learned the rich are screwing the poor etc.
If I could beat my tax dollars out of the hood rates legally, I would do it.
Riddle me this batman...
The UK, Germany and Japan were bombed to a crisp and were flattened countries. Now Japan is the #2 Economy in the world, Germany is #3, and the UK is #4. How could these countries go from rubble and dead soldiers, to the greatest countries on earth while say the african continent is still living in such poverty? How come those 3 countries built themselves up ( from nothing), while some countries never can?
The UK, Germany and Japan were bombed to a crisp and were flattened countries. Now Japan is the #2 Economy in the world, Germany is #3, and the UK is #4. How could these countries go from rubble and dead soldiers, to the greatest countries on earth while say the african continent is still living in such poverty? How come those 3 countries built themselves up ( from nothing), while some countries never can?
oh?i thought i heard biden talking about FDR going on TV and calming everyone down...i think i saw it on GMA or some other show like that...
oh here it was????
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The Depression era of the early to mid 30's would have been very awful to live through as a child or adult. A prolonged drought in the midwest during this time ( The Dustbowl) didn't help things any, making food scarce.
The US Mint made very few new coins from 1931-1933... no need for them, some denominations suspended completely. For example no quarters in 1931 or 1933, many other examples exist. This never happened before. There was no commerce, no need for new coins... the old ones could be dug out of your piggybank.
TV certainly didn't exist, but you would have had food in 1927 or so ( as a kid), Daddy would have had a job, maybe even a Model T Ford.
Not in 1933.
Gold Confiscation: Will it happen again?
1933 Gold Confiscation
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated during the depths of The Great Depression. Most commercial banks in the United States had closed by Inauguration Day, March 4, 1933. Anxious Americans, demanding gold, had reduced the Federal Reserve's gold supply almost to the legal minimum, creating additional fears of an impending monetary crisis.
At the time, the United States still adhered to the gold standard, which provided for fixed exchange rates between currencies and gold and made gold an alternative form of currency. The international gold standard had been one of the first casualties of World War I, but enjoyed a brief revival after the war. It disappeared for good in the legislative circus that served as the coming-out party for the Roosevelt administration.
On March 6, the President set in motion a chain of events that ended the international gold standard once and for all. First, he closed the nation's banks and prohibited them from paying out or exporting gold coin and bullion, using emergency powers granted by the Trading with the Enemy Act that had been enacted during World War I. When it was called to the President's attention that there was no legislative justification for either the executive or the legislative branch of government to close privately owned banking institutions, he prepared legislation to confirm what he had already done.
Three days later, he sent to the 73rd Congress the Emergency Banking Relief Act, which sought to amend the Trading with the Enemy Act and specifically those provisions which authorize the President in times of war to "investigate, regulate, or prohibit... the importing, exporting, hoarding, melting or earmarking of gold..." The change made by the Emergency Banking Relief Act was to provide the President with authority to act "during any other period of national emergency declared by the President", thus expanding his authority beyond the limitation of actual war. The Act also vested the Secretary of the Treasury with the discretion to compel holders of gold to surrender it.
In introducing the bill, House Majority Leader Joseph W. Burns asked that it be considered immediately and that debate be limited to forty minutes. Despite the fact that most of the Representatives knew nothing of its contents, the Emergency Banking Relief Act passed in the House and Senate that same day, at which point it was signed into law by the President. The legislation was passed with such haste that one Congressman stated for the record that the House had approved "a bill that Members never read and never saw, a bill whose author is unknown." That bill still has legal effect today.
The very next day, acting under the authority of the Emergency Banking Relief Act, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 6073. In addition to authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to decide which of the nations' banks could open, the Order prohibited owners of gold from exporting or otherwise removing it from the United States. Shortly thereafter, also under the authority of the Emergency Banking Relief Act, the President issued Executive Order No. 6102, which provided that all privately owned gold in the United States was to be confiscated by the government. As compensation, the owners would receive paper money.
The ultimate result of this legislative blitz was to knock the United States off of the gold standard. However, the fact that this was the President's ultimate objective was not made clear to Congress, and certainly not to the public. At a press conference on March 8, 1933, Roosevelt joked, "As long as nobody asks me whether we are off the gold standard... that is alright, because nobody knows what the... gold standard really is...”. Nor was the confusion confined only to elected public servants. In April of 1933, Roosevelt told Henry Morgenthau, Jr., the Secretary of the Treasury, that he had taken the country off the gold standard, to which the Secretary replied, "What? Again?"
Previous: Will confiscation happen again?
1933 Gold Confiscation
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated during the depths of The Great Depression. Most commercial banks in the United States had closed by Inauguration Day, March 4, 1933. Anxious Americans, demanding gold, had reduced the Federal Reserve's gold supply almost to the legal minimum, creating additional fears of an impending monetary crisis.
At the time, the United States still adhered to the gold standard, which provided for fixed exchange rates between currencies and gold and made gold an alternative form of currency. The international gold standard had been one of the first casualties of World War I, but enjoyed a brief revival after the war. It disappeared for good in the legislative circus that served as the coming-out party for the Roosevelt administration.
On March 6, the President set in motion a chain of events that ended the international gold standard once and for all. First, he closed the nation's banks and prohibited them from paying out or exporting gold coin and bullion, using emergency powers granted by the Trading with the Enemy Act that had been enacted during World War I. When it was called to the President's attention that there was no legislative justification for either the executive or the legislative branch of government to close privately owned banking institutions, he prepared legislation to confirm what he had already done.
Three days later, he sent to the 73rd Congress the Emergency Banking Relief Act, which sought to amend the Trading with the Enemy Act and specifically those provisions which authorize the President in times of war to "investigate, regulate, or prohibit... the importing, exporting, hoarding, melting or earmarking of gold..." The change made by the Emergency Banking Relief Act was to provide the President with authority to act "during any other period of national emergency declared by the President", thus expanding his authority beyond the limitation of actual war. The Act also vested the Secretary of the Treasury with the discretion to compel holders of gold to surrender it.
In introducing the bill, House Majority Leader Joseph W. Burns asked that it be considered immediately and that debate be limited to forty minutes. Despite the fact that most of the Representatives knew nothing of its contents, the Emergency Banking Relief Act passed in the House and Senate that same day, at which point it was signed into law by the President. The legislation was passed with such haste that one Congressman stated for the record that the House had approved "a bill that Members never read and never saw, a bill whose author is unknown." That bill still has legal effect today.
The very next day, acting under the authority of the Emergency Banking Relief Act, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 6073. In addition to authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to decide which of the nations' banks could open, the Order prohibited owners of gold from exporting or otherwise removing it from the United States. Shortly thereafter, also under the authority of the Emergency Banking Relief Act, the President issued Executive Order No. 6102, which provided that all privately owned gold in the United States was to be confiscated by the government. As compensation, the owners would receive paper money.
The ultimate result of this legislative blitz was to knock the United States off of the gold standard. However, the fact that this was the President's ultimate objective was not made clear to Congress, and certainly not to the public. At a press conference on March 8, 1933, Roosevelt joked, "As long as nobody asks me whether we are off the gold standard... that is alright, because nobody knows what the... gold standard really is...”. Nor was the confusion confined only to elected public servants. In April of 1933, Roosevelt told Henry Morgenthau, Jr., the Secretary of the Treasury, that he had taken the country off the gold standard, to which the Secretary replied, "What? Again?"
Previous: Will confiscation happen again?
