According to Milton Friedman, it takes an average of eighteen months for federal policy to have an effect on the economy. Thus, it may be that one should stagger the calculations of any given Administration's record to reflect that lag. In any event, the "figures" I was referring to were the numbers I had used, not the individuals mentioned.
I agree with you that Mr. Hoover had a clearly collapsing economy. On the other hand, there were not clearcut policy prescriptions for the event to employ, nor was the prognosis clear. We do not know if the worst of the retraction was over by the time FDR took office, for example, and therefore we do not know if Hoover were right to mostly ride it out.
Did FDR "turn it around"? Surely he presented a relatively moderate alternative to demogogues like Father Coughlin, and helped to undermine support for the Left. But it is difficult to evaluate what good the New Deal did for the economy overall, since it is hard to disentangle the "natural course of events" from policy, and conjecture about alternatives. But as soon as he eased off on deficit spending, we had a second recession in the period, suggesting that pump priming was not going so well, and that what helped more was the advent of war......... |
