Conrad Black, writing in the Wall Street Journal:
Most authentic historians credit Roosevelt with swiftly reviving the American banking system, guaranteeing bank deposits, minimizing the number of bank failures and substantially alleviating the Depression. Yet as with most other historical achievements, the revisionists have been hard at work. Jim Powell of the Cato Institute (cited approvingly in a recent column by Robert L. Bartley) argues in a new book that FDR actually prolonged the Depression!
Free market economists and historians have been arguing for years along the same lines as Powell. Whether they are 'authentic' or not I have to agree with them. Alex Tabarrok counters:
Of course, Powell is correct. Imagine, increasing the power of unions to strike and raise wages during a time of mass strikes and mass unemployment. Imagine thinking that cartelizing whole industries thereby raising prices and reducing output could improve the economy. Not everything Roosevelt did was counterproductive - he did end prohibition (although in order to raise taxes) - but plenty was and worst of all was the uncertainty created by Roosevelt's vicious attacks on business.
This is one of those issues, like global warming, where opinions are clouded by ideology. The anti-interventionist stance makes more sense to me. The country recovered in spite of Roosevelt, not because of him.
Posted by Walter at November 8, 2003 09:38 AM