Posted by iceburn on 5/9/2004, 5:39 pm, in reply to "Communist infiltration what-if" http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/cratrewhite.html Economics is all about free trade, and like the article said, White's actions were not subversion or pro-Communistic idealism. His actions were more inspired by a wish to promote free trade between the Soviet Union, the United States, and all of Europe. In effect, Harry White was trying to further his visions for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, organizations and ideas that he hashed out with the renowned British economist John Maynard Keyes. Do I think that having White as treasury secretary would have hurt the American economy or world position? Absolutely not. Having an economist like White as treasury secretary would have only increased the leadership of the United States in the global economy and quickened the recovery of Europe after World War II. Instead, we got the Cold War, and a deeply economically depressed Eastern Europe. The basis of current economic theory is free trade. White was out to make the U.S. number one, and most importantly, promote free trade throughout Europe, which means more exports for the U.S. Of course, it could also have led to more imports than exports, but in a society such as ours that consumes way more than it saves, such is to be expected. Regardless, the American standard of living would have increased and the European standard of living would have increased. The article I mentioned earlier obviously downplayed the importance of the information traded, but information was traded nonetheless. My belief is that information must be traded, and that when the Soviet Union and the U.S. were allies, such information should and was traded. Once the gloves came off between the U.S. and U.S.S.R., then obviously the U.S. government wanted such trading to stop, but like White, I believe that such an action was less advantageous to the U.S. because it shut down so many avenues to free trade and increased standards of living in the U.S. and Europe. I don't blame him for trying to the get the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. to the table to hash out some kind of economic agreement. That is his job as an economist. I don't really know what Laurence Duggan passed to the Soviet Union, so I can't really form an opinion on his actions or his abilities in the position mentioned in your post. However, you can read actual Venona intercepts online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/intercepts.html I just think it is unfair to label anyone that passed information to the Soviet union as spies and un-American. If anything, it would seem that White was a spy to further American influence. That's just my two cents. Then again, I did just make a 100.9 in Macroeconomics this semester. Maybe I'm just a big commie Thank you for your time, Iceburn
69.21.239.166
But I found this article on Harry Dexter White far more informative and less biased. 
.
Message Thread:
« Back to thread