President Urges Americans to “Spend Freely” To Avoid Recession

Posted on January 26th, 2008 by mike

[The US President announced] a series of conferences to devise means of preventing the Stockmarket decline from affecting US business … The automobile makers, represented by Ford and General Motors’ Alfred P. Sloan Jr., were satisfied that 1930 would be a normal year … The general note of the Ford economic analysis was similar to the Hoover position that: Past market breaks created caution; caution hurt buying power; lack of buying power caused business recessions. Therefore: let the US spend freely regardless of security levels … Rumors of curtailment were denied. Merchant Jesse Isidor Straus of RH Macy & Co. said it was not true he had laid off 1,200 employes but that he had discharged 28, taken on 200. Other executives spoke along the same lines. Alexander Legge. Chairman of the Federal Farm Board, drawled, “It looks as if industry would have to begin scraping around to get employes instead of laying off anybody.”

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Tags: 1930s, Alexander Legge, Alfred P Sloan, deficit spending, economics, Great Depression, Henry Ford, Herbert Hoover, Jesse Isidor Straus, Keynesianism // Add Comment »

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