In assessing the New Deal's contribution to economic recovery, I've naturally tended to draw on fairly recent research. That keeps me from being accused of being out of date. But it makes me vulnerable to the charge of overlooking the testimony of experts who studied the New…
"Without Roosevelt's intervention, the economic recovery that lasted from 1933 to 1937 would have been weaker and shorter—-not unlike our own recovery after the Great Recession." (David Weiman, "Imagining a World without the New Deal," The Washington Post, August 12th, 2011.) *** In the previous installment to…
"In 1934, the government price of gold was increased to $35 per ounce, effectively increasing the gold on the Federal Reserve's balance sheets by 69 percent. This increase in assets allowed the Federal Reserve to further inflate the money supply." ("FDR takes United States off gold standard,"…
"The public plainly showed that it recovered from the fear and hysteria which characterized the last few days before the banking holiday was proclaimed." (The New York Times, March 14th, 1933.) During the opening days of March, 1933, the U.S. economy resembled a stricken body slowly bleeding…
"Roosevelt had conducted an active monetary and fiscal program of recovery…working along lines suggested by Keynes." Eric Rauchway, The Money Makers, p. xvi. As we saw in the last installment to this series, New Deal fiscal policies did little to help the U.S. economy recover from the…