Oddbean

I'd agree that he greatly extended The Great Depression and made it worse, but Herbert Hoover was also pretty interventionist and had some pretty terrible policies during his term. The stories of farmers producing milk and pouring it down the drain were under his watch; they had some dogma against deflation at the time.

for sure, but the great depression was simply something that would have been cleared by the market in about 6-12 months like every major down turn is when there isn't aggressive intervention. So FDR is the only reason it lasted for 10 years and actually *became* the Great Depression to begin with. But you are entirely right that Hoover was very much the same. In fact there was a writing i read a long time ago by one of FDR's economic advisors who said that they literally took one of Hoover's plans, while publicly attacking hoover, essentially rebranded it as The New Deal, and did almost all of the same things Hoover had intended to do.