>> It was FDR, not Herbert Hoover, whose Communist economics kept the Great Depression going ten years longer than necessary <<
Wrong. Neither man was the prime villain. Careful and pathbreaking research by Milton Friedman showed that the fault lay with the Federal Reserve system’s mistaken monetary policy.
Plus, if you look, Hoover was implementing many of the same policies FDR did.
The guys most responsible for pointing the economy in the wrong direction were Woodrow Wilson, who authorized the Federal Reserve, Teddy Roosevelt, with some of his “progressive” policies, FDR, and LBJ.
Then, of course, along come Clinton, Bush, and Obama. Regretably, Bush did nothing to reverse Clinton’s left-wing policies and appointments.
The Federal Reserve was enabled by FDR, who took the country off the gold standard and let them run wild.
“Careful and pathbreaking research by Milton Friedman showed that the fault lay with the Federal Reserve system’s mistaken monetary policy.”
Well he and Anna Schwartz said it was the Fed’s failure to act, a paralysis made worse because their leader died on the eve of the Depression and they couldn’t decide what to do. So they stood pat as thousands of banks failed with a resulting collapse of the money supply.
One third of American banks failed 1930-33 and one third of the money supply simply evaporated. Depositors were wiped out too because we had no FDIC at that time; Friedman called the creation of the FDIC the most important legislation to come out of the Depression.
Bernanke was a student of Friedman and Schwartz’s study of “The Great Contraction” and was worried that the collapse of the housing bubble could take the banking system down with it, in a replay of the 1930s. TARP and some other policies were intended to keep banks from going bankrupt as mortgage paper defaulted.