Jan 27, 2009

Roosevelt’s Slow Embrace of Government Spending


(NYTimes) - ... In 1934, the British economist John Maynard Keynes visited Roosevelt in the White House to make his case for more deficit spending. But Roosevelt, it seems, was either unimpressed or uncomprehending. “He left a whole rigmarole of figures,” Roosevelt complained to his labor secretary, Frances Perkins, according to her memoir. “He must be a mathematician rather than a political economist.”
Keynes left equally disenchanted, telling Ms. Perkins that he had “supposed the president was more literate, economically speaking.”
It would not be until the early 1940s, with the beginning of World War II, that a strong dose of Keynesian medicine was administered to the American economy. Continued

Photo: FDR by Miguel Covarrubias

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