thomas ferguson, from normalcy to new deal

(45): importance of looking not just at labor policy, but also foreign economic policy (which was "so spectacularly" a hallmark of the later new Deal)

(46): important--what stands out is the novel type of 'political coalition' built by Roosevelt: a 'historical bloc' of capital-intensive industries, investment banks, and internationally oriented commerical banks. this piece is a "formal theory" of industrial partisan preference as the "joint consequence" of class conflict and the differential impact of the world economy" [this last part is key--without class conflict, none of this applies]

(47-48): a theory of class coalitions in two parts

1. a static theory: two axes--first (49), the overarching question is the exact 'price' that businesses have to pay to obtain support from the workforce. again, this will vary, he's arguing, by the nature of your industry (two extreme example--robot workforce or machinery-less labor process); second (53), another question has to concern the position of various firms within the world economy (internationalists vs. nationalists).
   
2. a dynamic theory: the system of '96 bloc was premised on an old, protectionist and labor-intensive bloc. but there was a transition to the capital-intensive, internationalist bloc (the two ideal transitions are via boom and via crisis (56-57)), leading up to the new deal. much of the piece concerns itself with the specifics of this transition.

(58-59): in event of depression--if world trade contracts, 'economic nationalism', at first, is likely to grow. but it will also lead to secondary crises, most notably over money supply--many industries (and most people, in fact) will want lower interest rates, eventually, since deflation is seen as determinental (especially for capital-intensive industries). yet this is not in the interests of big international banks, insurance companies and bond holders.

(62): historically, the system of '96 collapsed in three stages

1. period immediately following WWI, and the boom--an emergent multinational bloc and the weakening of the old coalition (see pg 70)
   
2. after great crash of 1929, division on the question of the gold standard
3. slowly emerged the american political world as is currently known

(64): Banks needed Europeans to export surpluses, to pay back loans, so they had an interest in lowering tarriffs (presumably this is counteracted to the extent that they have given loans to companies who depend on tarriffs)

(83): as i am understanding this, abandonment of the gold standard was an attempt to kickstart 'inflation'--to seek their independence from the 'money market', in effect (French and British threatened a run on gold)

(85): first new deal coalition--initially the NRA (1933) pleased the economic nationalists, but began to self-destruct from the moment in came into operation

(87): second new deal coalition--first successful capital-intensive led political coalition (here is where we get NLRB and Wagner and whatnot, in 1935)

(89): the opposition to all this was a bloc of protectionist and labor-intensive industries

(93-94): four conclusions

1. by 1938, a 'system of '36' was in place--social welfare, oil price regulation, free trade, even 'keynesianism'
2. we need to specify the role that labor played in shaping the new deal, integrating it into the differential cost-benefit framework specified here.
   
3. note the inadequacy of traditional ways of conceptualizing business (big vs. small, monopoly vs. competitive)
4. this study has implications for contemporary politics--how much we don't know about events we've studied (noting the archival material he waded through)