How Roosevelt And His New Deal Prolonged The Great Depression

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How Roosevelt And His New Deal Prolonged The Great Depression The traditional view of Franklin D. Roosevelt is that he motivated and helped the United States during the “Great Depression” and was a great president, however, as time has passed, economist historians have begun analyzing Roosevelt’s presidency. Many have concluded that he did not help America during the Great Depression but instead amplified and prolonged the depression. Jim Powell wrote about FDR economic policies and did an excellent job explaining Roosevelt’s incompetent initiatives. Roosevelt did not know anything about economics and his advisors made everything worse by admiring the Soviet Union. Franklin D. Roosevelt attended Harvard University and then Columbia Law School, but did not graduate from law school. Roosevelt was the only president to be elected for four consecutive terms. He led the American government through the Great Depression and World War II until his death on April 12, 1945. He has been categorized as one of the greatest presidents in the history of the United States. Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidential election in 1932 against Herbert Hoover. By 1936 Roosevelt’s political party, the Democrats, held the majority in the Congress in the House and the Senate. The Great Depression is not entirely Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fault; Herbert Hoover made it worse before Roosevelt entered office. Hoover increased taxes and passed laws like the Tariff Act of 1930, which made the perfect recipe for the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt followed the same policies as Hoover and made more laws to make everything worse. Franklin D. Roosevelt was a lawyer, not an economist or business man, and “FDR appeared to be utterly ignorant of econo... ... middle of paper ... ...d to provide some protection for the 8,750 acres in Chattanooga.” General consensus is that this would affect the economy negatively. Franklin D. Roosevelt thought that more government power and involvement in the market would help the economy. Mistakenly he thought that the United States should exhibit the ideals of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union destroyed Russia, but luckily the United States did not end up like that. Roosevelt’s “alphabet soup” did not help the economy in the United States. Instead, it exacerbated and prolonged the Great Depression. The National Recovery Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority were like the French and British colonies in Africa, you invest too much money but you gain zero profit out of them. In the end, Roosevelt’s policies hurt and prolonged suffering of American people in the name of promoting his ideals.

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