Designs within Disorder Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Guide to abbreviations in citations of sources
- Prologue
- 1 Stage setting in the presidential campaign of 1932
- 2 Curtain raising in the first hundred days
- 3 Deployments in the second half of 1933
- 4 Rethinking the structuralist agenda (I): The fate of NRA, 1934–35
- 5 Rethinking the structuralist agenda (II): The fate of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration 1934–36
- 6 Rethinking macroeconomic strategies, 1934–36
- 7 Shock tremors and their repercussions, 1937–38
- 8 Toward a new “official model,” 1939–40
- 9 Designs for the management of an economy at war
- 10 Designs for the postwar world
- Epilogue
- Bibliographical note
- Index
8 - Toward a new “official model,” 1939–40
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Guide to abbreviations in citations of sources
- Prologue
- 1 Stage setting in the presidential campaign of 1932
- 2 Curtain raising in the first hundred days
- 3 Deployments in the second half of 1933
- 4 Rethinking the structuralist agenda (I): The fate of NRA, 1934–35
- 5 Rethinking the structuralist agenda (II): The fate of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration 1934–36
- 6 Rethinking macroeconomic strategies, 1934–36
- 7 Shock tremors and their repercussions, 1937–38
- 8 Toward a new “official model,” 1939–40
- 9 Designs for the management of an economy at war
- 10 Designs for the postwar world
- Epilogue
- Bibliographical note
- Index
Summary
Roosevelt's decision to embark unapologetically on a “spend-lend” program in April 1938 appeared to signal that the administration had come to terms with an Americanized version of Keynesian aggregate demand management. This orientation toward macroeconomic policy making was solidified in early 1939. With a nudge from Marriner Eccles, the president urged a number of his cabinet officers to assist in selling “compensatory fiscal policy” to the public. As he put it:
We must present our case to the country. … For instance the Secretary of the Treasury could explain the soundness of the case. The Secretary of Commerce could do it with the aid of the more liberal members of the Business Advisory Council. The Secretary of Agriculture could do it with the objective of education of agricultural interests. The Secretary of the Interior could speak on the same subject from the angle of conserving material and human resources. … Economic soundness of the policy is already recognized by many economists and business men in this country .…
Meanwhile another vehicle for economic education was moving on a different track. The Temporary National Economic Committee (TNEC), with its charge to investigate the concentration of economic power, was off and running. Given its makeup, there was considerable uncertainty about what its activities would ultimately amount to. This body was, after all, an institutional hybrid. Half of its members were drawn from the Congress (three from the Senate, three from the House of Representatives), and six were appointed to represent executive departments and agencies.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Designs within DisorderFranklin D. Roosevelt, the Economists, and the Shaping of American Economic Policy, 1933–1945, pp. 116 - 131Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996