Our country has fought through multiple crises throughout its lifetime; some of which being depressions, war, and civil irresponsibility. Our thirty-second president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, faced one of the biggest struggles in America, the Great Depression, wholeheartedly. Now we face an almost identical crisis, but under a new president, Barack Obama. FDR's first inaugural address is related to our current economic crisis through the unemployment rate of our country then and now, and the state of each of our financial systems.
One of the things that you might notice with our current economy would be our unemployment rate. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of December of 2008, 7.2% of the country was unemployed[i], which means that out of every hundred people in the United States, about 7 people don't have a job. This is very similar to the situation back in 1933, whilst the Great Depression was in full effect. FDR's speech states, "Our greatest primary task is to put people to work … treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war,"[ii] This was his way of telling the people that this problem is just as important as World War Two, which he also had to deal with.
Another big thing that has been happening with our economy is the financial crisis; banks and insurance companies going down, some of which even going bankrupt. One such company, AIG, has been having problems with this for years. "For the second time in three years, the board at American International Group, the giant insurance company, replaced its chief executive Sunday in the wake of its falling stock price and regulatory concerns about its accounting"[iii], says Jonathan Glater for the New York Times. AIG claims the problem has been the policies their CEO's have been putting in place along with their CEO's poor use of the company's assets, and have been trying to deal with this problem by getting rid of two CEOs since 2005. There was a very similar problem back in 1933 that FDR also commented about in his speech. "The rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence," [iv] This explains that the money dealers, or the leaders of the American financial systems, have been committing very similar acts that our financial leaders have committed.
1933 was a very hard time for the United States, but Franklin Roosevelt was there to help us through it. Now, we are in a scarily similar situation, and we now have a new president, Barack Obama, who has also dedicated himself to bringing us back to what we were. With the 2nd Depression on its way, and the corruption within our financial system boiling over with faults, we really need someone similar to FDR to help us pull through.
[i] "Current Population Survey(CPS)." U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 26 Jan. 2009 http://www.bls.gov/cps/.
[ii] Roosevelt, Franklin Delano. "First Inaugural Address." East Portico of the Capitol Building, Washington D.C.. 4 Mar. 1933.
[iii] Glater, Jonathan. "With Shares Battered, A.I.G. Ousts Leader - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com." Mergers, Acquisitions, Venture Capital, Hedge Funds - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com. 16 June 2008. 26 Jan. 2009 <http://dealbook.blogs.
[iv] Roosevelt, Franklin Delano. "First Inaugural Address." East Portico of the Capitol Building, Washington D.C.. 4 Mar. 1933.
1 comments:
The content is descriptive. The connection between FDR and Obama is very good.
The use of evidence flows very good within the paragraphs. How you label the evidence and quotes is very professional.
This piece of writing is informative and after reading it, leaves you thinking about it.
Quick-question, since i am not from here, i dont understand "CEO". An advice would be to give a brief description about what it is.
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