FDR tried lots of thing that had the opposite of the intended effect.<p><i>Invoking the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, Roosevelt declared that &quot;all banking transactions shall be suspended.&quot; Banks were permitted to reopen only after case-by-case inspection and approval by the government, a procedure that dragged on for months. This action heightened the public&#x27;s sense of crisis and allowed him to ignore traditional restraints on the power of the central government.<p>In their understanding of the Depression, Roosevelt and his economic advisers had cause and effect reversed. They did not recognize that prices had fallen because of the Depression. They believed that the Depression prevailed because prices had fallen. The obvious remedy, then, was to raise prices, which they decided to do by creating artificial shortages. Hence arose a collection of crackpot policies designed to cure the Depression by cutting back on production. The scheme was so patently self-defeating that it&#x27;s hard to believe anyone seriously believed it would work.<p>-- snip --<p>Yet after all this, the grand promise of an end to the suffering was never fulfilled. As the state sector drained the private sector, controlling it in alarming detail, the economy continued to wallow in depression. The combined impact of Herbert Hoover&#x27;s and Roosevelt&#x27;s interventions meant that the market was never allowed to correct itself. Far from having gotten us out of the Depression, FDR prolonged and deepened it, and brought unnecessary suffering to millions.</i><p>What will be the ultimate result of the interventions you propose? How are we examining the long-term effects of government intervention in the economy and cutting back the government where it is harmful to prosperity?<p>What about the acute depression of 1920[2]? Are we learning any lessons from that?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mises.org&#x2F;library&#x2F;how-fdr-made-depression-worse" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mises.org&#x2F;library&#x2F;how-fdr-made-depression-worse</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mises.org&#x2F;library&#x2F;forgotten-depression-1920" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mises.org&#x2F;library&#x2F;forgotten-depression-1920</a>