Posted by Tina
* Gordon Brown said yesterday that we now have a unique opportunity to do in a 21st century way what was done in the 20th century by the American New Deal. *** But, contrary to popular wisdom, the New Deal never came close to ending the great slump of the 1930s. And what is more, many experts believe that its creator Franklin Delano Roosevelt actually made it much, much worse. *** There is no doubt that his public works and workfare schemes provided desperately needed relief for millions. At a time when welfare was no more than rudimentary, these schemes meant the difference between starvation and survival. *** Yet the New Deal was meant to bring not just relief, but economic recovery. In that respect, it failed. *** Even after FDR had won three elections, he had still not managed to restore economic confidence or get millions back to work. *** And it was not until the gigantic mobilisation of the Second World War that the economy began to inch towards recovery. Mostly Wrapping Paper, read the title on a newspaper cartoon from 1942, showing an ordinary American sitting despondently amid reams of Roosevelts broken promises. *** Indeed, FDRs economic programmes should be a byword for disastrous government intervention, although the New Dealers were less keen to raise taxes and borrow money than todays tax-and-spend merchants imagine. *