Which Mascara For Conditioning

Roosevelt "Prolonged the Great Depression?

What better way to start a week with two economists getting better (and younger) than me? In this case Rallo and Angel. The two have been around a while making statements like Roosevelt is "responsible President of the Great Depression was prolonged until shortly after his death." And the truth is that the trial of Angel (the second link) is fine. But the numbers fail.

The truth is that never before or since Roosevelt has grown the American economy as the eight years of FDR's first two terms. 72% or more than 7% per capita over the period. Of course I agree with them that:

(1) FDR took command in 1933, when they probably already had purged much of the bad investments of the system;

and (2) The Second World War is a great stimulus to the U.S. economy from 1939 (by their own military spending and probably also the rest of the world exports and capital flight to USA).

But the fact is that in the absence of a credible counterfactual, even if some think that could have grown without the New Deal, what remains are those numbers that always cling Keynesians. And speculations as those of Robert Higgs on uncertainty regime can help, but will never be entirely convincing.



The graph shows the two largest economies of the moment. In 1933 the U.S. was poorest (per capita) than the UK again (had been well ahead since the first decade of the century). The year 1937 was the last time that the island where the richest live outside the U.S. average.

[This post had been prepared some time, but inspired me to finish reading this magnificent profile of Ron Paul in The Atlantic . I am surprised that Joshua Green, who created quite sympathetic with the Tea Party, write something like this: "Only when Roosevelt Took the dollar off the gold standard and Committed to Deficit Spending, and the Fed ADOPTED Consistently low Interest rates, the economy did finally start to recover. This Validated the argument of the Austrians' intellectual adversaries, Economists like John Maynard Keynes, Rather Than That stand aside, governments mitigates Should Intervene to recessions. "]