New Deal or Raw Deal?

This is an interesting article on the subject of Roosevelt and the New Deal. Now, as you all know (and yes, we did study this) not everyone greeted the New Deal with enthusiasm, the Republican rigt particularly thought that the best medicine for the depression was none intervention in the market and to let events take their natural course. Economic downturns do tend to remedy themselves over time, but normalyl not until a lot of hardship has taken place. There was a general feeling in the 1930s also that whilst cyclical economic downturns had been seen before, there was nothing quite like the great depression to have taken place in living memory. JM Keynes argued that individuals and businesses did not possess the capital to drag America (or anywhere else for that matter) out of the slump, so government would have to act. Read this article for the pros and cons of the New Deal.