Time to learn how to weld and prepare for the second coming of Hoover economics.
Be a survivor.
= new reply since forum marked as read
perfect.
It has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together. 
That chart would have to include 8 penny nails. Between the three products, my father kept our house and furnishings together. Nothing quite like sitting on a kitchen chair held together with huge nails and great swathes of duct tape.
I'm a big advocate of learning how to build, repair, sew, cook and farm/garden. It kept my mother's people in a comfortable (but not well-off) life during the Great Depression. Being only one generation removed, I learned the lessons of survival, though I didn't practice them as well as I'm trying to do now.
I would add a screwdriver to that.
I'm so stealing that...
Although many people at the time and for decades afterwards denounced Hoover for taking a hands-off ("laissez-faire"
approach to the Depression, a few historians emphasize how active he actually was. Hoover said he rejected Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's suggested "leave-it-alone" approach, and called many business leaders to Washington to urge them not to lay off workers or cut wages.
Economist Murray Rothbard argues that Hoover was actually the initiator of what came to be the New Deal. Hoover engaged in many unprecedented public works programs, including an increase in the Federal Buildings program of over $400 million and the establishment of the Division of Public Construction to spur public works planning. Hoover himself granted more subsidies to ship construction through the Federal Shipping Board and asked for a further $175 million appropriation for public works; this was followed in July 1930 with the expenditure of a giant $915 million public works program, including a Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. In the spring of 1930, Hoover acquired from Congress an added $100 million to continue the Federal Farm Board lending and purchasing policies. At the end of 1929, the FFB established a national wool cooperative-the National Wool Marketing Corporation (NWMC) made up of 30 state associations. The Board also established an allied National Wool Credit Corporation to handle finances. A total of $31.5 million in loans for wool were made by the FFB, of which $12.5 million were permanently lost; these massive agricultural subsidies were a precedent for the later Agricultural Adjustment Act. Hoover also advocated strong labor regulation law, including the enactment of the Bacon-Davis Act, requiring a maximum eight-hour day on construction of public buildings and the payment of at least the "prevailing wage" in the locality, as well as the Norris-LaGuardia Act in 1932. In the Banking sector, Hoover passed The Federal Home Loan Bank Act in July, 1932, establishing 12 district banks ruled by a Federal Home Loan Bank Board in a manner similar to the Federal Reserve System. $125 million capital was subscribed by the Treasury and this was subsequently shifted to the RFC. Hoover was also instrumental in passing the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932, allowing for prime rediscounting at the Federal Reserve, allowing further inflation of credit and bank reserves.
Lee Ohanian, from UCLA, argues that Hoover adopted pro-labor policies after the 1929 stock market crash that "accounted for close to two-thirds of the drop in the nation's gross domestic product over the two years that followed, causing what might otherwise have been a bad recession to slip into the Great Depression". This argument is at odds with the more Keynesian view of the causes of the Depression, and has been challenged as revisionist by J. Bradford DeLong of U.C. Berkeley.
He was also a firm believer in balanced budgets (as were most Democrats), and was unwilling to run a budget deficit to fund welfare programs. However, Hoover did pursue many policies in an attempt to pull the country out of depression. In 1929 he authorized the Mexican Repatriation program to help unemployed Mexican citizens return home. The program was largely a forced migration of approximately 500,000 people to Mexico, and continued until 1937. In June 1930, over the objection of many economists, Congress approved and Hoover reluctantly signed into law the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act. The legislation raised tariffs on thousands of imported items. The intent of the Act was to encourage the purchase of American-made products by increasing the cost of imported goods, while raising revenue for the federal government and protecting farmers. However, economic depression had spread worldwide, and Canada, France and other nations retaliated by raising tariffs on imports from the U.S. The result was to contract international trade, and worsen the Depression.
Congress, desperate to increase federal revenue, enacted the Revenue Act of 1932, which was the largest peacetime tax increase in history. The Act increased taxes across the board, so that top earners were taxed at 63% on their net income. The 1932 Act also increased the tax on the net income of corporations from 12% to 13.75%.
The final attempt of the Hoover Administration to rescue the economy occurred in 1932 with the passage of the Emergency Relief and Construction Act, which authorized funds for public works programs and the creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). The RFC's initial goal was to provide government-secured loans to financial institutions, railroads and farmers. The RFC had minimal impact at the time, but was adopted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and greatly expanded as part of his New Deal. Hoover also encouraged Congress to investigate the New York Stock Exchange, and this pressure resulted in various reforms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover#Great_Depression
While many of Hoover's economic and fiscal policies were typical republican, it was amazing to me how many of his policies would have gotten him kicked out of the modern GOP.
two-thirds of the drop in the nation's gross national product ...".
Why he chose to put the role of the stock market crash in the collapse of GDP in the same sentence as "Hoover adopted pro-labor policies" after the crash is beyond me. I am far from an English major but that is terrible sentence structure.
