* Steve Saville, “The difference between good money and bad money”, 321gold.com, July 29, 2008:

Economically, Roosevelt's massive government borrowing/spending scheme - the same sort of 'solution' that many people are advocating today - was a total flop, for the reasons that anyone with even a basic understanding of economics would appreciate. For example, during Roosevelt's first 6 years in office the Federal Government's debt ballooned astronomically in response to government spending on an unprecedented scale, and yet the number of unemployed in America was higher in 1938 than it had been when Roosevelt was first elected President in 1932. The grandiose spending was, however, a political success, and thus fulfilled its primary objective.

* David Leonhardt, “When Jobs Are Bountiful and Pay Isn’t”, nytimes.com, October 25, 2006:

The Social Security Act of 1935, as the historian Edward Berkowitz has noted, laid the groundwork for the “Roosevelt recession” of 1937 and 1938.

* George F. Will, Declaration of Dependence, washingtonpost.com, July 8, 2007:

The Depression's persistence, partly a result of such policy flippancy, was frightening. In 1937, during the depression within the Depression, there occurred the steepest drop in industrial production ever recorded. By January 1938 the unemployment rate was back up to 17.4 percent. The war, not the New Deal, defeated the Depression...

* David Kennedy, “Freedom from Fear”, p.362:

Roosevelt himself stood before the world in 1938 as a badly weakened leader, unable to summon the imagination or to secure the political strength to cure his own country’s apparently endless economic crisis. In the ninth year of the Great Depression and the sixth year of Roosevelt’s New Deal, with more than ten million workers still unemployed, America had still not found a formula for economic recovery. From such a leader, what could the democracies hope? From such a troubled nation, what did the dictators have to fear” (Kennedy, p.362).

* Paul Johnson, “A History of the American People”, p.617:

From the very start ... Hoover agreed to take on the business cycle and stamp it flat with all the resources of government...

[Hoover's] policy of public investments prevented necessary liquidations. The businesses he hoped thus to save either went bankrupt in the end, after fearful agonies, or were burdened throughout the 1930s by a crushing load of debt. Hoover undermined property rights by weakening the bankruptcy laws and encouraging states to halt auction-sales for debt, ban foreclosures, or impose debt moratoria. This in itself impeded the ability of banks to save themselves and maintain confidence. Hoover pushed federal credit into banks and bullied them into inflating, thus increasing the precariousness of their position” (Johnson, p.619)
BACKLASH AGAINST INTERVENTIONISM

“Revolt of the Middle Classes

“"Printed and spoken abuse of government is seen and heard on all sides" - Carl Sandburg, 1932

“In 1929, retrenchment was once again the predominant popular reaction, although it did not find immediate expression in the policies of government. The initial popular reaction to the depression after 1929 was to blame it on excessive government spending. Most citizens who worked in the private sector were obliged to deflate their living standards and household budgets in line with the contraction of the economy. Governments did not retrench as much as had previously been the case. Partly this was because Herbert Hoover was an advocate rather than an opponent of government action to dampen the business cycle. Hoover encouraged local governments to spend. He tried to keep wages up, including those for government employees. Nonetheless, there was a strong push to cut public expenses. Government spending was a small portion of the economy in 1929 by 1990 standards. Yet most citizens believed that they were getting little for their tax dollars. There were angry cries to slash spending. Harold Bettenheim, editor of American City magazine, an opponent of budget-cutting, observed:

“It has become fashionable to decry government and taxes. Demands for indiscriminate budget-slashing are the order of the day. So-called economy leagues are springing up all over the country. Embattled taxpayers are organising strikes. Fluent orators are taking to the air to attack governments and the costs of government.

“The American Municipal Association, an organizaton of city governments, lamented that "there are a great many people with whom the need for economy in government has become an obsession or mania that they have become violent and destructive opponents of all government." Historian James T. Paterson remarked, "As tax revenue dwindled and unemployment increased economy in government became a magic word."

“In short, the initial reaction to the depression was a political demand to cut government spending. Candidates elected to governorships in 1930 and 1932 were generally advocates of economy in government. Paterson reports, "Retrenchment dominated the governors' messages of 1931 and thereafter"... The national mood of retrenchment...helped elect Roosevelt... It was only after the economy had stabilized and the household sector ceased having to lower its own consumption that demands for retrenchment began to slacken” (James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg, “The Great Reckoning”, pp.422-423).

“...The notion that easy money is a magic tonic that can counter the forces of contraction is likely to seem alluring as an argument than it proves to be a fact. In 1929, neither the Federal Reserve nor the Bank of England could overcome the worldwide forces making for contraction just by manipulating numbers on their balance sheets. Economic historian Joseph W. Davis put it this way:

“A careful reading of a mass of contemporary literature and an analysis of economic and financial developments in 1930 yield little or no support for the views (a) that Federal Reserve policy in that year was open to serious criticism, or (b) that flooding of the money supply by the Federal Reserve System would have effectively checked the contraction or moderated the current and ensuing collapse. With enterprise "collapsed," the forces making for contraction were too strong to be overcome by the stimulus of artificial reducing short-term money rates below the very low levels actually reached” (Davidson & Rees-Mogg, p.350).

“Contrary to the current wisdom that stupidly tight money turned the '29 stock market crash into depression, accounts of 1930 speak of "extreme ease of money"... That what seemed to be easy money at the time was denounced later as "too tight"...” (Davidson & Rees-Mogg , p.444).

“"The Federal Reserve policy of cheapening credit through the purchase of government bonds has been unable to make a dent in the conservatism of borrower or bank lender, in short, every anti-deflationary effort has yet to provide positive results"” (Editorial, Barron’s, July 11, 1932, quoted by Bob Hoye, How a currency can fight the Fed, prudentbear.com, March 31, 2004).