Back to the future economics

From ten years into the Great Depression:

We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong . . . somebody else can have my job. 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.

—Henry Morganthau, FDR's Treasury Secretary, testimony to Congress, May of 1939

Clearly our high school text books have been wrong on the economics of the New Deal, though unfortunately right on the popularity of the politics. For what economists understand to have actually ended the Great Depression, see the two theories.

Another fun fact: at the time Ronald Reagan was an admirer of FDR and supported the New Deal.