John Moser

He kind of spoke with a monotone.

But FDR was a master at the use of radio.

And his fireside chats, which began, his first one was just a week or so after he became president.

which is credited really with saving the banking system because he's explaining to the American people in words that they could understand, not using lofty political language or legal language, but explaining it in a way that ordinary people understood it and saying, you can trust me when these banks reopen, they're safe.

You can put your money back in there and it will be okay.

And that's exactly what happened.

It is.

He does manage to restore consumer confidence, but he doesn't do as good a job of promoting investor confidence.

In fact, starting in 1935, he takes a turn that is very anti-wealthy.

Anti-big business, anti-bank, casting them as villains.

And to a certain extent, he did that earlier.

But his rhetoric really became almost class warfare in 1935 and 1936.

Yeah.

And so you saw this phenomenon where there's an uptick in consumption and businesses are replenishing their inventories.

They're selling stuff, but they are not interested in expanding factory capacity and they're not interested in hiring.

And that's the big reason why, one of the big reasons, why unemployment remains so high during this period.

And then 1937, the economy tanks once again.

So there's a problem here.

FDR is saying what ordinary people want to hear, but he is not saying what investors want to hear.

Interesting.