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Conventional wisdom tends to treat President Hoover as a clueless advocate of laissez faire who refused to stimulate the economy in the dramatic downturn. Franklin Roosevelt, on the other hand, was the heroic leader who both saved the day and transformed the American economy through his promotion of the New Deal. …
There is little corroboration in the historical record for this simplistic storyline. … Most of what both Presidents did in fiscal policy had little impact on the Depression one way or another. … The consensus view is that FDR’s [main] policy success was the abandonment of the gold standard in 1933.
Though there is still a lively popular debate about the “true” cause of the Great Depression, there is nonetheless a strong expert consensus … The Fed’s focus on curbing speculation in the stock market by restricting lending—as well as its unwillingness to extend liquidity and expand the money supply in the face of a collapsing economy and a wave of bank panics in the early 1930s—deeply aggravated the severity and extent of the downturn.
That is John Nye. Read and learn.
Great Depression
Our Government an Big Business out controll is in too far an too deep to stop the Greedy from Wall Street,Big Oil, FDA, Governers, state employees have rapped our economy ancountry to its knees. Its a freight train once set in motion, that cannot be stopped till it crashes.
That is probably what Hoover thought after the first year. I have little doubt Hoover would have worsened the situation further had he had a longer term. He had very limited ideas about how he could intervene and most of them were wrong, yet his was the conventional view of the time. It was FDR's lack of conventionalism that turned things around. Perhaps anyone else could have done so, it doesn't take a genius to abandon failing policies, but it does take some courage and someone uncommitted to them.