The world war II generation

My parents were members of the WWII generation. My dad was born in 1917, my mom in 23. They experienced the “great depression” at a young age and my dad served in WWII while mom was a “Rosie the Riveter”. The experience followed them for the rest of their lives. (Dad’s gone but mom is still alive and well) They, like so many millions of their counterparts of that generation, made one huge mistake in an otherwise brave and fruitful lifetime. Actually it was two huge mistakes closely related.

When the “great depression” hit America it scared and scarred the entire country. The economy grew much too fast and with much too little effort thanks to a greatly inflated money supply and a “bubble” was created, much like the housing bubble that started what could be the “greater depression” of today. When that bubble burst with the stock market crash of 1929 no one, including the Federal Government and the newly founded “Federal Reserve” knew what to do about it and lives by the millions were ruined almost overnight.

It is said that when a person is faced with an imminent threat he or she will choose between “fight or flight”. The former is to immediately stand up the threat and try to put a stop to it. The latter is to run from it and try to live to fight another day. Unwittingly, an entire generation chose flight when it came to a collapsed economy. The mistake made by that generation was in not making a firm determination why the great depression occurred and making the necessary corrections. Rather than being angry and putting up the necessary fight to restore the economic well being of a nation, they chose instead to follow Franklin Delano Roosevelt into the flight we all know as the “New Deal.” It was the beginning of socialist policy in the United States and the first real test of Keynesian economic thought which is that economies can be sheltered from economic downturn by large scale government spending which of course is made possible by the Federal Reserve and it’s money creation policies.

My father, whom I loved and respected dearly, went to his grave believing that Mr. Roosevelt and his big government policies “saved” America from ruin and was a lifelong Democrat largely for that reason. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, he refused to believe that, not only did the policies not work, (a fact admitted by Roosevelts own staff in 1937) but they actually prolonged the depression until the beginning of WWII which is the event that actually did end the depression with the sheer magnitude of the war effort. Sadly, it was probably the great depression, brought on by the Federal Reserve and their European counterparts that gave birth to Hitler as Germany struggled to free itself from the same depression.

To be totally fair, it was my grandfather’s generation that was in the best position to put a stop to the Federal Reserve, but it was their children who had to opportunity to look back and seriously study the situation and conclude the US monetary policy was seriously flawed and demand change. Sadly, this generation was thrust into a World War that, for 5 long years, consumed every bit of it’s energy and when it ended, left many economic questions unanswered. Without even realizing it, this generation was brainwashed into thinking the Federal Government is the answer to all it’s challenges which started the United States down a slippery slope of greater and greater debt and more and more dependency by more and more citizens on the labors of others for their survival until we no longer need ask “if” the country will collapse under the weight of it’s government, but “when.”

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