John Moser

Yeah, that's a big part of it, right?

Most of the other world's industrial powers were flat on their back.

I give the new deal some credit.

The handling of the banking crisis in 1933 was masterful.

The departure from the gold standard, not the entire departure, but allowing the gold content of the dollar to decrease, that was very important because that, that, that

allowed for an expansion of the money supply.

Those were the really important things that the New Deal did.

A lot of other New Deal programs were counterproductive.

National Recovery Act, which was invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1935, but that was tremendously counterproductive.

Some of the, like the Wagner Act propped up wages.

I mean, it was good for unions, but I think that was probably harmful for the economy at large.

Something else FDR did.

A move toward free trade, getting away from the really high tariff regime of the 1920s.

So this is going back to something you asked earlier.

Is there something wrong with the 1920s?

Well, yeah, there are some things wrong.

One of them was the really high tariffs, which hurt the country and hurt international trade.

FDR, it took them a little while to get onto the free trade bandwagon.

But there was definitely freer trade in the second half of the 1930s.

And that helped the economy.