[oldbrowser]

WRONG! Herbert Hoover wasn't the "architect" of the Great Depression. It was poor federal reserve policy in the late 1920s that caused the depression. Hoover and Roosevelt only made things worse by their meddling in the economy.

I thought Smoot-Hawley had a lot to do with the depression.

[Clemenza]

Smoot-Hawley put the nail in the coffin for Hoover's political career. Of course, there are many on this site who believe that if we "raised tariffs" to "pertect factory jahbs" we would go back to being a blue collar, smokestack nation again. It was STUPID then and is STUPID now.

[Austin Willard Wright]

Smoot-Hawley probably did not cause the initial downturn but it was instrumental in turning a garden-variety recession into a full-scale depression.