Meh. The Soviets threatened us and the world with total nuclear annihilation, or world domination. AQ has managed to kill a few thousand people. The trade was more than worth it.
Actually, the blunder that was Secession turned out good for the USA and for the South. It got rid of the national disgrace that was slavery, turned the USA into an industrialized power, and gave us a first class world military. It fits perfectly with what the Op wants.
24 * (1.08^383) = 152 trillion, give or take.
If it’s compounded continuously it would be $486 trillion. I think 8% growth over that period of time is a bit unrealistic though. Taking off 1% growth a year is roughly a 50 times decrease in value.
I was going to come in to mention this. So boneheaded.
I was going to come in to mention this. So boneheaded. But they were afraid their precious gold would leak out of the country if they didn’t raise domestic interest rates! The gold! Think of the gold!
(To explain this further, taking money out of the money supply does two things. One, it shuts down spending and tanks your economy. Two, it raises interest rates because people are willing to pay more for money. Why don’t you want low interest rates? Because then you have French scumbags borrowing from you, the said scumbags are taking your gold. It works the same with non-loan assets too, which don’t have to be re-paid. We couldn’t let them have our gold. Don’t ask me why. And we didn’t understand that shutting down spending was a bad thing. Don’t ask me how we were that thick, either.)
It actually makes perfect sense. The purpose was the same as GWB’s invasion (and purposefully messed up reconstruction). GHB left Saddam in power, with the explicitly stated purpose of letting the Iraqi people overthrow him themselves, in order to sow chaos and instability in the region. (Because really… you want them to revolt? For democracy? Oh, I get it. :rolleyes:) Why would he want that? Because it raises the price of oil.
Teach a woman to fish… Write your own program. Peter Minuit bought it in 1624. That’s 385 years. Assume the First National Bank of Manhattan paid a rate you kids have never seen, and which is even more than the 5.25%, compounded annually, that I would, as a child of inflation, expect. Write your program so that it prints the result of each year. Hint: You multiply the result of each year, in this case, by 1.08. Continue over 384 years.
Operation Market Garden, though there were numerous signs before the operation started that it was going to end badly.
The formost in my mind being, when supplied intel by the Dutch resistance(and backed up by aerial photos) that there were German Tanks in their intended path, the British wrote them off as “Probably broken”.
Wasn’t that more of a great historical blunder that was actually a bad decision?
I think many of the examples given were bad decisions at the time.
Munich agreement? Read Churchill’s “Gathering Storm”. (It’s irrelevant to my point, since it’s hindsight, but Hitler’s generals were planning a coup against him that same day for provoking a war for which they were unprepared. They stood down after Chamberlain’s mistake in awe of Hitler’s foresight.)
Deflationary policies during early 1930’s? It seems amazing that economic theory was so defective then, but perhaps it’s a fact.
Repealing the Glass-Steagall act in 1999 with 90% majorities in both houses of congress? I’d use this as evidence of America’s nonsensical fascination for right-wing capitalist purity, rather than the impossibility of foresight. If social-science professors had votes instead of Congess, I doubt you’d get close to 50% let alone 90%.
So what “correct” answers do I propose? I’ll mention a few:
Pursuit of petroleum exploration.
Wage controls in 1940’s era which led to employer-provided health insurance, and ultimately an unfair and expensive health care system.
And I’m not sure the collapse of the Soviet bloc was a good thing. The two-superpower system may have avoided the nuclear-armed rogue state scenarios we face today.
Munich was clearly a mistake at the time. Although I hesitate to call it a mistake. It was actually just rank cowardice and dishonor.
Glass-Steagall being repealed was necessary. A 1930s regulatory regime can’t properly regulate the banking industry, and in any case wouldn’t have prevented the financial crisis. At best, it would have mitigated it a little, but at the cost of less growth in the years previous.
Without derailing the thread- what precisely was Great Britain going to do other than appease Hitler? It was trying desperately to bring it’s armed forces up to scratch and was in no position to challenge the Axis forces.
Regarding Hitler’s generals being about to depose him- is there any verification of this? Churchill is known for writing history to enhance his own standing.
Sure- not appease him. Yes, GB didn’t have the army to oppose Hitler, but they still had the #1 navy. What they didn’t know is that Hitler didn’t have much of an army either. There is also a long distance between going to war over the Sudetenland and letting Hitler just have it.
Not appeasing him entailed what exactly?
Well, you can** not **more or less force Czechoslovakia to give up a 3rd of their nation, esp the part with the forts and stuff. You can just say “NO!”. They when he goes ahead and takes it anyway, at least you have some moral high ground- and Poland has a little more warning.
WWII history is outside my area, but you can find Google hits like
Of course, you have a point about Churchill 
:
In Churchill’s view, Munich was just one in a long series of mistakes. Allowing Hitler to violate treaty and base soldiers in Rhineland was a key military blunder, though showing Allied resolve would have been more important than any specific military action.
Britain couldn’t fight Germany in 1939 either. Some historians say that Munich bought the allies time, but they didn’t use that time to catch up to Germany in armaments. Germany continued to increase their lead over them, and taking the Skoda works peacefully was a huge coup for the Nazis.
Shame he never admitted his support for isolation in the Spanish Civil War, and the betrayal of the Republic to fascism was one of those instances where showing resolve would have been important.
You once again show your hard-leftism. The “Republican” cause is Spain was deeply corrupt, controlled by the Communists, and dedicated to murder and tyranny. At best, you can argue that it would have been no worse than Franco’s mild dictatorship, but the entire history of Communism would dispute you on that.
Then I guess you are showing once again your support for fascism. Through the policy of isolation, any hope for the democratic left in Spain disappeared. The only avenue of support available was from Stalin. Mild dictatorship my arse.
Invading the Soviet Union. In 1914-1917, the Germans had defeated the Russians despite it being a secondary theater and the Soviets had in the last few years shot their generals and the Germans had no threat in the West, Britain was out of the Continent, the Americans were sitting out.