Today many Americans credit FDR with rescuing our nation from the Great Depression, but there's plenty wrong with that view, says Lee Ohanian, a UCLA economics professor who specializes in economic crisis. "What's wrong with that view is that private-sector job growth did not come back under Roosevelt," says Ohanian, who notes that Americans often forget how long the Great Depression lasted. Unemployment stood at 17 percent in 1939, a decade after the infamous stock market crash, and, although times were much worse back then, Ohanian sees troubling parallels between the Great Depression and the Great Recession. In both instances our nation emerged from a severe downturn with strong productivity growth and the banking system largely restored. We were poised for a recovery, but didn't get one. "So the key puzzle for both today and the 1930s is why aren't private-sector jobs being created at a much more rapid rate?"
Uncertainty may have something to do with it. "Uncertainty is an enemy of job creation," says Ohanian. "Because in a world with a lot of uncertainty there's a tendency to 'wait and see.'" Our nation's job creators wait and see what Washington's next experiment will be.
CEO Joanne Garneau has spent a year waiting for the Federal Trade Commission to announce a new regulation that will determine whether her company hires more employees or even stays in business. It's just one regulation, a tiny one by Washington standards. How will businesses end up being affected by ObamaCare or the 2,300-page financial overhaul? What if taxes go up? Today, like the 1930s, uncertainty reigns.
Watch the whole damned thing.
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