False Dawn
The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933–1947
False Dawn
The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933–1947
A definitive history of the United States’ recovery from the Great Depression—and the New Deal's true part in it.
FDR’s New Deal has long enjoyed a special place in American history and policy—both because it redefined the government’s fundamental responsibilities and because Roosevelt’s “bold experimentation” represented a type of policymaking many would like to see repeated.
But “the thing about bold experiments,” economist George Selgin reminds us, “is that they often fail.” In False Dawn Selgin draws on both contemporary sources and numerous studies by economic historians to show that, although steps taken during the Roosevelt administration’s first days raised hopes of a speedy recovery from the Great Depression, instead of fulfilling those hopes, subsequent New Deal policies proved so counterproductive that over seventeen percent of American workers—more than the peak unemployment rate during the COVID-19 crisis—were still either unemployed or on work relief six years later.
By distinguishing the New Deal’s successes from its failures, and explaining how the U.S. finally managed to lay the specter of mass unemployment to rest, Selgin draws salient lessons for dealing with future recessions.
384 pages | 4 halftones, 12 line drawings, 2 tables | 6 x 9
Markets and Governments in Economic History
Economics and Business: Economics--History
Table of Contents
Preface
Part I Groundwork
1 The Record
2 Inventing the New Deal
3 The Banking Crisis
4 The Bank Holiday
5 Deposit Insurance
6 The RFC, Part 1
7 FDR and Gold
Part II The New Deal
8 The AAA
9 The NRA
10 The NRA, Coda: The Brookings Report
11 A New Deal for Housing
12 The RFC, Part 2
13 Fiscal Stimulus?
14 FDR’s Fed
15 The Recovery So Far
16 The Roosevelt Recession
17 The Keynesian Myth
18 The Keynesian Myth, Continued
19 Fear Itself
20 Fear Itself, Continued
Part III After the New Deal
21 War, and Peace
22 The Phantom Depression
23 The Fate of Rosie the Riveter
24 Happy Days
25 Postwar Monetary Policy
26 The Great Rapprochement
Notes
References
Index