John Moser

Big growth in US exports in this period.

So those are the things that I think FDR did right.

If you ask me what really, more than anything else, led to economic improvement in the 1930s was the fact that gold from Europe was flowing into the United States.

And that gold allowed for a tremendous increase in the supply of money.

If you were wealthy in Europe in the 1930s and you're looking down the road,

It looks like there's going to be another war.

And what is a safe haven for your gold or foreign currency?

Send it to the United States.

Nothing's going to happen to it there.

Though not entirely.

FDR left gold in 1933.

And then for a while, he wasn't really sure what to do with it.

He kept dictating the price of gold day by day.

That was probably a really dumb strategy that didn't work.

But in early 1934, Congress, at FDR's urging, passed the Gold Reserve Act, which repegged the dollar to gold, but at a different rate.

So the dollar was not worth as much in gold as it had been before.

And so that freed up for greater growth in the money supply as well.

There's no doubt that the federal government plays a more important role in the post-war period.

There is a consensus that develops that the basics, that the federal government has responsibilities that were not expected before.

the new deal never goes away.