The New Deal and Modern Memory

Abstract

The “Great Recession,” which began at year‐end 2007, was precipitated by plunging real estate values, followed by borrower defaults and financial crisis for the public and private institutions that supplied loanable funds to the mortgage market. With economic growth not yet returned to trend, three years on more than 9% of the American labor force remains unemployed. Current macroeconomic events, perhaps inevitably, have been compared to those of the Great Depression of 1929–1933, both in terms of severity and of the efficacy of the public policies adopted ostensibly to restore prosperity. In this article, I review the literature on the New Deal, paying particular attention to modern scholarship emphasizing the role of presidential politics and antibusiness political rhetoric in deepening and prolonging the Great Depression. The parallels between then and now suggest that the two economic contractions had similar causes and elicited equally counterproductive policy responses.

The U.S. Postal Savings System and the collapse of building and loan associations during the Great Depression

“…By funneling money towards government bonds, postal savings exacerbated a problem articulated by Shughart II (2011) in his articulation of the “credit view” of the Great Depression when the “reallocation of loanable funds towards treasuries and other government‐guaranteed debt made it more difficult for private borrowers to obtain the credit they needed to finance spending that otherwise would have boosted aggregate demand” (Shughart II, 2011, p. 521).…”

A Study of the Relationship Between Individuals and the Society

“…Many people could not bear bankruptcy and then committed suicide. Public security deteriorated; therefore, the crime rate increased [3].…”

East Asian approaches of activation: the politics of labor market policies in South Korea and Taiwan

“…The final theoretical revision concerns the impacts of economic crises and political turmoil on social policy. Previous studies point to the impact of crises on social policy; for instance, during previous economic crises, it was not programmatic policy competition but rather nonprogrammatic competition that led to the expansion of fiscal and social policies (Armingeon, 2012;Higgs, 1987;Shughart, 2011). Crises created difficulties for large segments of the population and motivated political parties to introduce temporary pork-barrel pledges for political gains in the election, regardless of ideological colors.…”