Another Great Depression? Bush Admits Officials Told Him It’s Possible
December 4, 2008 by Thomas Jones
Filed under economy, recession
Do you get the sense that top U.S. government officials tell us, the gullible masses, what we want to hear… and Washington bigwigs something else much more sinister?
This week, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told interviewers that the U.S. is NOT facing anything even remotely as serious as the Great Depression. And Bernanke should know: He’s a widely respected scholar who has written extensively on the causes of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Here is what Bernanke said:
Well, you hear a lot of loose talk, but let me just … say, as a scholar of the Great Depression — and I’ve written books about the Depression and been very interested in this since I was in graduate school, there’s no comparison,” Bernanke said in a question period after an address in Austin, Texas. “During the 1930s, there was a worldwide depression that lasted for about 12 years and was only ended by a world war,” he said.
“During that time, the unemployment rate went to 25 percent, at least, based on the data that we have. The real GDP (gross domestic product) fell by one-third. About a third of all of the banks failed. The stock market fell 90 percent.”
BUT THEN, in the VERY SAME ARTICLE, it says that Bernanke told President George Bush they had to act fast to prevent an even WORSE financial catastrophe than the Great Depression. “In a related matter, President George W. Bush said in an interview released Monday that Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warned him weeks ago that bold action was needed to avert a new Great Depression.
“I can remember sitting in the Roosevelt Room with Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke and others, and they said to me that if we don’t act boldly, Mr. President, we could be in a depression greater than the Great Depression,” Bush told ABC News.
So, which is it? Is it not even close to being a depression… or it is on the verge of being WORSE than the Great Depression?
Bernanke tells Bush one thing and the public something else.
