Demystifying the New Deal
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Carola Binder reviews False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933–1947 by George Selgin
US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal projects and regulations were so wide-ranging in their aims and scope that it’s hard to reach a simple verdict on their effectiveness. George Selgin rightly avoids attempting to do so in False Dawn, his new book examining the administration’s 1933–39 policies and the recovery from the Great Depression.
Selgin, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives and economics professor emeritus at the University of Georgia, challenges the idea that the New Deal was a coherent plan that Roosevelt designed before taking office. Rather, key components were cobbled together after his inauguration, often without Roosevelt’s initial support.
Selgin takes on these components one by one, from the 1933 bank holiday and the gold programs to the alphabet soup of agencies, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), the National Recovery Administration (NRA), and the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC).
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