[lbo-talk] How a bankrupt Germany solved its Infrastructure Problems

Marv Gandall marvgand2 at gmail.com
Tue Jul 23 09:21:46 PDT 2013


On 2013-07-22, at 5:41 PM, Chuck Grimes wrote:


> The Doldrums
> Hitler vs. Bernanke
> by MIKE WHITNEY
>
> Why was Adolph Hitler able to lift Germany out of the Great Depression, when
> policymakers in the US–particularly the Fed–have failed so miserably?
>
> ------------
>
> Hitler had the elected opposition in the Reichstag arrested, their political parties banned, and what was left of the Reichstag abolish itself after handing legislative power over to the Chancellor and Ministeries. He used Hindenburg to coordinate the military aristocracy to mobilize the army, navy and airforces behind him. He had Goring and the Himmler produce similar support in the domestic police and state security forces in the cities. Meanwhile Hitler had Goebbels take over a mass media propaganda machine and produce wall to wall coverage of the New Germany, ridding itself of the Jewish cabal of bankers, trusts, and industrialists who were in treasonous league with the Allied powers out to lay waste to the honest, hard working German people. He fired all his political enemies along with the Jewish professionals in civil service and replaced them with his own supporters, the more fanatic the better qualified. Since all public education was state civil service there was no child left behind ...
>
> The point to his economic policies was infrastructure reconstruction for the sole purpose of producing a permanent war machine that included nearly the entire population and all available resources natural and preternatural.
>
> Germany solved its economic problems by creating a pathological state whose only teleological end was war, mass death, and total destruction. The economic problems took two years to solve while the rest took another ten.
>
> On the other hand that is definitely a bad example of how to solve economic problems with state power. It can be immediately used by reactionaries and the neoliberal economic professions to make a near perfect argument against increasing state power over the economic system.
>
> So, I don't find it helpful or convincing.
>
> I don't even like the conclusion that, The economy is in the doldrums because that’s where Bernanke and Co. want it to be. I am virtually certain Bernanke would prefer it was all coming up roses, because then it would prove his policies have worked.

Excellent comment on an idiotic piece. I've never been much impressed by Whitney.



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