As banks continued to fail the decrease in the money supply became so extreme that cities began to issue scrip and people began to barter. President Hoover continued to act. After the Austrian Creditanstalt Bank failed in May he proposed a moratorium on interest payments on international debt to Germany. But he vetoed the Muscle Shoals Bill for a government project to dam the Tennessee River and generate electricity.

all years | 1929 | 1930 | 1931 | 1932 | 1933 | 1934 | 1935 | 1936 | 1937 | 1938 | 1939

1929-1939: “A Decade that will live — in stupidity.”

Why Stuck on Stupid?

Seventy years ago the leaders of both US political parties turned away from the policies that had created an economic powerhouse we call the Roaring Twenties. For ten long years Americans suffered through wrenching economic dislocations: deflation, inflation, a four-year economic contraction, endless unemployment, mindless political experiments, and ruthless attacks on businessmen for political gain as their leaders stayed Stuck on Stupid.

Today, after a twenty-five year economic boom, Americans are once more faced with a political elite that wants to monkey with success. It wants to raise tax rates. It wants to restrict trade. It wants to increase government power.

It’s time to look back and remind ourselves how it came to be, starting in 1929, that America got itself Stuck on Stupid. Otherwise it could happen again.

— Christopher Chantrill

SOURCES

Cook Partisan Voting Index
gives a quick look at the partisan rating of each congressional district.. There are currently 10 Democratic-leaning districts represented by Republicans and 71 Republican-leaning districts represented by Democrats.

Measuring Worth - GDP Series for US and UK
includes GDP and chained GDP for US; GDP and chained GDP for UK

Republicans: Still Happy Campers
Year after year, Republicans are happier than Democrats. Even in 2008

American National Election Study 2004
Berkeley's control panel

University top 200 in full
Harvard is still #1

Gross Domestic Product by State
from Bureau of Economic Analysis

UAH monthly satellite record
UAH satellite temperature record on global temperatures

The world's 50 most powerful blogs
at least as far as the lefty Guardian is concerned.

IRS Income Tax Share Table
the rich pay the income taxes

No Freedom Without Economic Freedom
US is fifth on Economic Freedom Index this year. Is that good enough?

Liberal-Conservative Self-Identification
from 1972.

US Current Dollar and "Real" GDP (xls)
US GDP series from 1929 to present

US GDP Percent Change from Preceding Period (xls)
US GDP change from 1929 to present

US Money Supply Historical Series
money supply from 1867 to 1970; Historical Statistics of US: X. Financial Markets and Institutions: Series X-415; p.992 (pdf)

Historical US Federal Spending
Table No. HS--47. Federal Government -- Receipts and Outlays: 1900 to 2003 (xls).

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Government Expenditure

The Union publishes an exact return of the amount of its taxes; I can get copies of the budgets of the four and twenty component states; but who can tell me what the citizens spend in the administration of county and township?
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America