75 years ago yesterday, on March 4, 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his first inaugural address.  The country was in desperate economic shape – the throes of the Great Depression – and FDR had been elected in a landslide to do something to pick the country back up. 

That day he spoke some of the most memorable words we’ve heard.  He said:  “This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  (Visit http://webstorage4.mcpa.virginia.edu/fdr/audiovisual/speeches/spe_1933_0304_roosevelt.mp3 to listen to the momentous speech.)

Those words are often taken in reference to foreign aggression, but at the time FDR was talking about the economy.

I heard a great discussion yesterday on NPR’s Marketplace about FDR’s New Deal and how its principles might be applied to today’s economic situation.  

Another line from FDR’s address sounds, as the show’s host put it, “like it was ripped from today’s headlines.”  He said: “There must be a strict supervision of all banking and credit and investments. There must be an end to speculation with other people's money and there must be provision for an adequate and sound currency.”

The program’s guest, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said, “Roosevelt understood that something had to be done to end speculation. There was no regulation to speak of. One of his goals was to make the market work, not to replace the market.”

It sounds a lot like what leaders are trying to do today – to make the market work again.

Just yesterday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke called for mortgage lenders to help defaulting homeowners by reducing the principal they owe on their mortgages.

. . . To read the rest of this post, about what government leaders are doing to help get the housing market – and the economy – back on track, visit http://www.myphoenixmls.com/phoenix-blog.asp.