DEBUNKING MYTHS ABOUT THE NEW DEAL

It's been said a million times since the fall of 2008: the financial collapse was the worst this country has experienced since the Great Depression.  So it's only natural to take a look back at that earlier time and to figure out what worked and what didn't.  As the video below explains, neither Hoover nor Roosevelt were exactly what they've been portrayed to be over the subsequent decades.



Five Myths About the Great Depression

The current financial crisis has revived powerful misconceptions about the Great Depression. Those who misinterpret the past are all too likely to repeat the exact same mistakes that made the Great Depression so deep and devastating.

Here are five interrelated and durable myths about the 1929-39 Depression:

• Herbert Hoover, elected president in 1928, was a doctrinaire, laissez-faire, look-the-other way Republican who clung to the idea that markets were basically self-correcting.
• The stock market crash in October 1929 precipitated the Great Depression.
• Where the market had failed, the government stepped in to protect ordinary people.
• Greed caused the stock market to overshoot and then crash.
• Enlightened government pulled the nation out of the worst downturn in its history and came to the rescue of capitalism through rigorous regulation and government oversight.