Henry Hazlitt on how FDR suspended gold conversion for Americans in April 1933

The possibility of a discriminatory capital-gains tax on gold ‘profits,’ or even of outright confiscation, cannot be wholly dismissed.  We must remember that in 1933, when private citizens began to exercise their clear legal right to convert their Federal Reserve notes and gold certificates into gold, President Franklin D. Roosevelt suspended the conversion, ordered the citizens to exchange their gold for paper money, and made it illegal for private citizens to hold or own gold.  In other words, the government not only broke its solemn and explicit pledge to convert its notes into gold on demand, but treated the holder (and dupe) who had taken the pledge seriously as the real culprit.  And the Supreme Court later upheld the president’s act and the new law. 

~ Henry Hazlitt

1933 St. Gaudens $20, world's most valuable coin,
sold at auction for $18.9 million in 2021

Lawrence Reed on how FDR campaigned against the big spending policies of Hoover in 1932

Did Hoover really subscribe to a "hands-off-the-economy" free-market philosophy?  His opponent in the 1932 election, Franklin Roosevelt, didn't think so.  During the campaign, Roosevelt blasted Hoover for spending and taxing too much, boosting the national debt, choking off trade, and putting millions on the dole.  He accused the president of "reckless and extravagant" spending, of thinking "that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible," and of presiding over "the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history."  Roosevelt's running mate, John Nance Garner, charged that Hoover was "leading the country down the path of socialism."  Contrary to the conventional view about Hoover, Roosevelt and Garner were absolutely right.

~ Lawrence W. Reed, "Great Myths of the Great Depression," Mackinac Center for Public Policy, 1981

Paul Johnson on H.L. Mencken's attacks against the New Deal

Mencken excelled himself in attacking the triumphant FDR, whose whiff of fraudulant collectivism filled him with genuine disgust.  He was the 'Fuhrer,' the 'Quack,' surrounded by 'an astonishing rabble of impudent nobodies,' 'a gang of half-educated pedagogues, nonconstitutional lawyers, starry-eyed uplifters and other such sorry wizards.'  His New Deal was a 'political racket,' a series of stupendous bogus  miracles,' with its 'constant appeals to class envy and hatred,' treating government as 'a milch-cow with 125 million teats' and market by 'frequent repudiations of categorical pledges.'

~ Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (1997), p. 762

Lawrence White on banks runs, the FDIC and latest round of bank failures

If the uninsured depositors in Bank A can't access their funds, that's going to make the depositors in Bank B nervous, we have contagion and then we're back to 1933.

I think on the one hand, FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] would be wincing and saying, "ah, man, I thought we wouldn't have screwups like this."  On the other hand, I think he would smile and say, "ah, it didn't spread, we haven't had contagion.  We haven't had widespread runs.  That was my goal in creating the FDIC."

~ Lawrence White, NYU Stern economics professor, "Everyone Wants Interest on Their Deposits. That's Bad for Main Street Banks.," The Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2023

Jacob Hornberger on the economic policies of Hitler, Mussolini, and Franklin Roosevelt

Three New Deals by Wolfgang Schivelbusch... compares the extreme similarities between the economic policies of Hitler, Mussolini, and Franklin Roosevelt.  It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Hitler actually wrote Roosevelt a letter commending him on his economic policies and pointing out that Germany was following much the same road.

~ Jacob Hornberger, "Leftists' Perverse View of Capitalism," The Future of Freedom Foundation, June 11, 2021

Jonathan Alter: Biden is first president since LBJ "who can rightly be called FDR’s heir"

For America to “own the future,” as the president promised last month, he needs to do amid the pandemic what Mr. Roosevelt did amid the Depression: restore faith that the long-distrusted federal government can deliver rapid, tangible achievements.

[...]

Just as Mr. Roosevelt understood that the laissez-faire philosophy of the 1920s wasn’t working anymore to build the nation, Mr. Biden sees that Reagan-era market capitalism cannot alone rebuild it. 

[...]

Whatever the future holds, Mr. Biden and Mr. Roosevelt are now fused in history by the size and breadth of their progressive ambitions.  Jimmy Carter took office when liberalism was fatigued; Bill Clinton said “the era of Big Government is over”; Barack Obama was forced to conform to the mantra of deficit hawks. Mr. Biden was lucky enough to have been elected when what the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. called “the cycles of American history” are spinning left.  He is the first president since Lyndon Johnson who can rightly be called F.D.R.’s heir.  Soon we’ll know if he squanders that legacy — or builds on it.

~ Jonathan Alter, "How F.D.R.'s Heir is Changing the Country," The New York Times, April 12, 2021

William Anderson on the laws of economics to Progressives

Like Franklin Roosevelt, who proclaimed that the laws of economics were nothing more than creations of human beings and could be changed by creating something akin to the "Socialist Man," Progressives really do believe that they can manipulate an economy by printing money or by borrowing or by raising taxes on wealthy people, and there will be no adverse economic effects. As Krugman likes to claim in his NYT columns and blog posts, massive borrowing is no problem because "we owe it to ourselves."

~ William Anderson, "Understanding the Progressive Mind," LewRockwell.com, December 27, 2012

FDR on "private power"

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

(FDR was born this day, January 30, 1882.)

Iriving Fisher: FDR's reflation efforts not enough to reach bottom (1933)

39. Those who imagine that Roosevelt's avowed reflation is not the cause of our recovery but that we had "reached the bottom anyway" are very much mistaken. At any rate, they have given no evidence, so far as I have seen, that we had reached the bottom. And if they are right, my analysis must be woefully wrong. According to all the evidence, under that analysis, debt and deflation, which had wrought havoc up to March 4, 1933, were then stronger than ever and, if let alone, would have wreaked greater wreckage than ever, after March 4.

~ Irving Fisher, "The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions," September 1933

Francis Biddle on the Constitution and war

The Constitution has never greatly bothered any wartime president.

~ Francis Biddle, Franklin Roosevelt's Attorney General, writing in 1962

Henry Morgenthau on the failure of New Deal Spending in 1939

We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. ... I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... and an enormous debt to boot!

~ FDR's secretary of Treasury and close friend, Henry Morgenthau, who served from 1934 to 1945, writing in 1939

FDR on politics

In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

FDR on banking influence on government

The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the United States since the days of Andrew Jackson.

~ President Franklin Roosevelt, November 21, 1933

Burton Wheeler on despotism

Every despot has usurped the power of the legislative and judicial branches in the name of the necessity for haste to promote the general welfare of the masses—and then proceeded to reduce them to servitude.

~ Senator Burton K. Wheeler, Montana New Deal Democrat, referring to Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempt to pack the Supreme Court in the mid 1930s

FDR on entry into World War II

I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt, shortly before the election of 1940

Franklin D. Roosevelt on free enterprise

A program whose basic thesis is, not that the system of free enterprise for profit has failed in this generation, but that it has not yet been tried.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

FDR on sacrifice

It is not a sacrifice for any man, old or young, to be in the Army or Navy of the United States. Rather it is a privilege. It is not a sacrifice for the industrialist or the wage-earner, the farmer or the shopkeeper, the trainman or the doctor, to pay more taxes, to buy more bonds, to forego extra profits, to work longer or harder at the task for which he is best fitted. Rather it is a privilege. It is not a sacrifice to do without many things to which we are accustomed if the national defense calls for doing without.

~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt, December 9, 1941

(From FDR's radio address two days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.)

FDR on the value of history

A nation must believe in three things. It must believe in the past. It must believe in the future. It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment for the creation of the future.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt