Great article. I've a feeling I'll be returning to it a lot. Two small addendums:
1. Might be worth mentioning the business plot in terms of FDR's rise to power. It was an absolutely laughable claim, but the newspapers repeated it until many people believed it. The only source for the claim was a colonel who very publicly and vocally supported FDR. He claimed that he had been approached by a number of shadowy businessmen (of the sort tied to Hoover) with the goal being to overthrow the republic and create a junta with the colonel at it's head.
There was no evidence this had ever happened other than his word, and why they would choose a very open FDR supporter for their coup was never explained. Ultimately he was given a post in the FDR administration and no charges were ever levied.
2. The core institutions responsible for the sub-prime bubble and 2007 crash were new deal institutions: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. FDR's claim was that banks were being too conservative and needed to be incentivised to be less cautious in their lending. So he offered to use public funds to back any loans they made provided they met his criteria.
The result is that public planning was transferred from small local banks to the federal government (since they determined the criteria which would allow the loans). Ultimately this resulted in the urban sprawl and suburbanisation of the 1950s as federal planners preferred suburbs. It also resulted in a massive market shift from small local banks to large, national ones since their primary customers were no longer locals but the federal government.
Great article. I've a feeling I'll be returning to it a lot. Two small addendums:
1. Might be worth mentioning the business plot in terms of FDR's rise to power. It was an absolutely laughable claim, but the newspapers repeated it until many people believed it. The only source for the claim was a colonel who very publicly and vocally supported FDR. He claimed that he had been approached by a number of shadowy businessmen (of the sort tied to Hoover) with the goal being to overthrow the republic and create a junta with the colonel at it's head.
There was no evidence this had ever happened other than his word, and why they would choose a very open FDR supporter for their coup was never explained. Ultimately he was given a post in the FDR administration and no charges were ever levied.
2. The core institutions responsible for the sub-prime bubble and 2007 crash were new deal institutions: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. FDR's claim was that banks were being too conservative and needed to be incentivised to be less cautious in their lending. So he offered to use public funds to back any loans they made provided they met his criteria.
The result is that public planning was transferred from small local banks to the federal government (since they determined the criteria which would allow the loans). Ultimately this resulted in the urban sprawl and suburbanisation of the 1950s as federal planners preferred suburbs. It also resulted in a massive market shift from small local banks to large, national ones since their primary customers were no longer locals but the federal government.