All Posts Tagged With: "FDR"

The 1932 Bait-and-Switch

Harry Truman once said, “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.” That observation applies especially well to what tens of millions of Americans have been taught about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the man under whom Truman served as vice president for about a month. Recent scholarship (including a highly acclaimed [...]

20May2010 | Lawrence W. Reed | 7 comments | Continued

Nothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days that Created Modern America

History buffs who focus on the world between the wars will find plenty to ponder in Adam Cohen’s Nothing to Fear. Openly critical books–from The Roosevelt Myth by John T. Flynn (1948) to FDR’s Folly by Jim Powell (2003)–have laid bare the politics and economics of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, showing us how not to [...]

20Apr2010 | Roger W. Garrison | 3 comments | Continued

Herbert Hoover

William E. Leuchtenburg is among the last surviving literary lions who played a major role shaping the reputation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His book Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (1963) stood out amidst the postwar deluge of worshipful works about FDR, including those by James MacGregor Burns, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Frank Freidel, [...]

24Mar2010 | Jim Powell | 3 comments | Continued

What Ended the Great Depression?

What finally ended the Great Depression? That question may be the most important in economic history. If we can answer it, we can better grasp what perpetuates economic stagnation and what cures it. The Great Depression was the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. From 1931 to 1940 unemployment was always in double digits. In [...]

24Feb2010 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 43 comments | Continued

Presidents and Precedents

America’s 44th president has embarked on a massive expansion of the federal establishment that, if accomplished, will dwarf all previous welfare states in its spending and debt. Americans will largely depend on politicians and their underlings for a significant portion of their heavily mortgaged livelihoods. It’s a path to national suicide that would horrify most [...]

24Feb2010 | Lawrence W. Reed | 13 comments | Continued

Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal

“He who wants to improve conditions must propagate a new mentality, not merely a new institution.” –Ludwig von Mises, New York Times, January 1942 Invisible Hands by Kim Phillips-Fein, professor of American history at New York University’s Gallatin School, is a well-researched and thorough account of resistance to government economic domination. It’s also a veritable [...]

24Feb2010 | Bettina Bien Greaves | 3 comments | Continued

Unmasking the Sacred Lies

Unmasking the Sacred Lies is an excellent introduction to the major economic policies of the United States. Author and Freeman contributor Paul A. Cleveland traces the history of those policies up to 2008, explains their effects, and explores their alignment with the nation’s founding principles. The book aims to “shed light on the underlying lies [...]

5Jan2010 | Joseph G. Lehman | 1 comment | Continued

Deflation: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

During the current recession a number of commentators have made various comparisons to the Great Depression, mostly because of the dramatic decline in the stock market and ongoing troubles in the financial industry. When oil prices also began a dramatic decline in the autumn of 2008, pulling the overall consumer price level downward for the [...]

5Jan2010 | Steven Horwitz | 59 comments | Continued

World War II Ended the Great Depression?

In his 2008 book, The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, Paul Krugman writes: “The Great Depression in the United States was brought to an end by a massive deficit-financed public works program, known as World War II.” He has since repeated this bon mot in a number of columns and television [...]

23Oct2009 | Richard W. Fulmer | 29 comments | Continued

Art Needs No State Subsidies

It’s feeding time again, and artists and cultural groups are lining up at the trough. The bailout package approved by Congress in February threw another $50 million at the arts. For the better part of the past year, music impresario Quincy Jones beseeched Barack Obama to add a secretary of arts to his cabinet. In [...]

23Oct2009 | Bruce Edward Walker | 1 comment | Continued

New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America

Not everyone loved President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Even in 1936, when he enjoyed his most lopsided electoral victory, almost 17 million voters cast their ballots for Alf Landon. During Roosevelt’s long presidency, he attracted vigorous literary critics, such as H. L. Mencken, John T. Flynn, and Garet Garrett. But the winners write the history, and [...]

19Aug2009 | Robert Higgs | 3 comments | Continued

Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush

There have now been many conservative and libertarian books covering the demise of American liberty under the U.S. Constitution, so if you don’t think you need to read another one, I understand. Still, if that’s what you think, you’re wrong. The latest entry in the genre, Thomas Woods and Kevin Gutzman’s Who Killed the Constitution?, [...]

17Jun2009 | Jacob H. Huebert | 1 comment | Continued

FDR’s Lucky Timing

It’s not clear how any of FDR’s 1933 policies could have accounted for a 17 percent increase in GDP, even if they promoted expansion, because they wouldn’t have had time to ripple through the economy. It seems more likely that FDR had the good fortune to come into office near the bottom of the Depression, and enough adjustments in wages, prices, and other factors had occurred that the economy was ready to recover.

10Jun2009 | Jim Powell | 5 comments | Continued

What Is Seen and What Is Unseen: Government “Job Creation”

How can Obama and his economic advisers know what kinds of jobs will position our economy to “lead the world” in the long term? Indeed, how can we expect anyone to know what kinds of jobs will be able to offer such a guarantee of wealth and security, considering the enormous complexity of our world?

10Jun2009 | Larissa Price | 32 comments | Continued

The Great Depression and World War II

What about World War II? Did it end the Great Depression? More generally, is war good for the economy? I answer both in the negative and borrow here from Ludwig von Mises: “War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.” As Higgs points out, because of the array of interventions in the wartime economy, war materiel was valued incorrectly and therefore the GDP data overstate economic conditions. Moreover, conscription and arms production gave a misleading employment picture

21May2009 | Art Carden | 8 comments | Continued

The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn’t): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game

Alvin Felzenberg, like many thoughtful scholars, has a beef with the way historians have evaluated American presidents. Ever since 1948, the year of the first Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. poll, historians have ranked American presidents and published the results. In the case of Schlesinger’s poll, a select group of historians ranked all presidents (except for those [...]

24Apr2009 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 0 comments | Continued

News Flash: FDR Didn’t Restore Prosperity!

The New Deal did not end the Great Depression. This statement will come as no shock to Freeman readers, but it will to the many people who have never encountered it before. Now people are encountering it—in newspaper columns and news-talk shows. Why, after years of being taught that Franklin Roosevelt’s economic intervention saved the [...]

2Mar2009 | Sheldon Richman | 5 comments | Continued
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