Gyroscopic Investing

Very funny!

Note the prominent place 3.2% beer plays (at about 5:33) in the lunch of the factory workers.  I'm sure that helped with productivity.  One of Roosevelt's first acts as president was to allow 3.2% beer prior to the repeal of prohibition.

That was awesome! Straight up propaganda, but effective. It really is hard for people today to realize just how desperate things were in the early 30's. A third of the country was out of work and there was no social safety net. My grandparents got married the year FDR was elected and they told some brutal stories about the depression. And as far as Roosevelt was concerned, one did not speak ill of the man in their home. My grandmother kept newspapers from 1935 when FDR came to Binghamton NY (where our family was from) to inspect the New Deal flood control program being done on the Susquehanna River after catastrophic flooding earlier that year. If the papers (which were Republican leaning) were to be believed, the only people who didn't turn out to see the president ride through the city in his open touring car were lying in a hospital bed. His car was repeatedly brought to a stop as it was mobbed by crowds of well wishers and people who were shouting that he (FDR) had given them a job or saved their home etc. etc.

That was a great use of propaganda. By the end of it I was thinking yay for inflation for saving us from ourselves! Then I realized I was an idiot and decided to come back to reality again.

Is it propaganda if it is true?  The perspective of the film seems to be from the deflationary "gold standard".

The same deflationary process is happening all over again in the EuroZone.  Whether gold fixings, government spending cuts or tax increases, it all has the same net effect of causing people to depress monetary velocity. 

And that is bad for business.