John Moser

And Congress said, absolutely no way are we going to let this happen.

This was FDR's first big legislative defeat was over the court packing plan.

And the accusations that were being made against FDR was, he's becoming a dictator.

He's already had Congress doing whatever he wanted

He wants to have a pliable Supreme Court.

And look, in retrospect, these accusations were overblown.

But you can understand why Americans looking abroad at what's going on in the fall of democracy in Europe, that America could be going that same direction.

Right.

Yeah.

So one of the myths I'm trying to bust in this book is that it was World War II.

And true enough, if you look at World War II, the official GDP is off the charts.

Unemployment vanishes to nothing.

But here's the deal.

Everybody understands that you could get rid of unemployment by drafting millions of people.

There's no trick to that.

The fact is...

Between 1939 and 1941, before the United States was in the war, you saw a dramatic improvement in the U.S.

economy.

Did the Depression end then?

I don't know.