Howard_T

Turning Japanese: The Audacity of Reality (Part 3 of 3)

Mr. Jeremy Needham has the correct slant on things for those who believe massive spending, a la WW II, will generate a recovery. Anyone who believes that throwing massive amounts of paper at the crisis will bail us out, just because it worked to end the depression of the 30's, hasn't looked at reality. In the late 30's, the US was the only economy among the major nations to be producing consumer goods. Europe and the industrial nations of Asia had been on a war footing for at least 3 years prior to 1941. During WW II we spent massive amounts of treasure to produce the means to fight the war, but at the end of 1945 we were the last nation left standing. Our productive capacity had not been touched, and with the pent up demand for goods fueled by the savings of a fully-employed population, the economy recovered to a consumer footing with blinding speed. Europe and Asia were forced to buy from us, and whatever treasure we had used during the war was rapidly replaced.

Perhaps once the population of the US figures out the ineptitude of our political leaders, we will take the correct 14 steps Mr. Quinn has proposed. Then maybe someone will emulate an impoverished Japanese mechanic at the end of WW II. This guy bought some surplus electrical generators from the US Army, removed the gasoline engines from them, and mounted the engines on bicycles to make motorbikes. He did pretty well thereafter. His name was Honda Shoichiro.