Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 23 hours ago
Professor George Selgin joins us for an Enlightenment Evening to explore the links between the Great Depression and the New Deal.
President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, his response to the 1929 financial crash and ensuing Great Depression, is lauded by many as a total victory of government economic policy. Massively expanding the instruments of the state, he created new government bodies and increased public spending.
But was the New Deal as purely medicinal as consensus makes it out to be?
Watch this video to discover the ugly truth behind the ensuing unemployment and business failure that followed, and see what lessons we can learn from big-state interventions into economic crises.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Start
01:34 - Selgin's thesis
06:57 - The New Deal was NOT Keynesian
10:30 - Monetary policy
14:35 - Did WW2 spending end the depression?
17:20 - Investment boom
20:56 - The Keynesian mythology
24:33 - Questions
42:05 - End
Professor George Selgin joins us for an Enlightenment Evening to explore the links between the Great Depression and the New Deal.
President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, his response to the 1929 financial crash and ensuing Great Depression, is lauded by many as a total victory of government economic policy. Massively expanding the instruments of the state, he created new government bodies and increased public spending.
But was the New Deal as purely medicinal as consensus makes it out to be?
Watch this video to discover the ugly truth behind the ensuing unemployment and business failure that followed, and see what lessons we can learn from big-state interventions into economic crises.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Start
01:34 - Selgin's thesis
06:57 - The New Deal was NOT Keynesian
10:30 - Monetary policy
14:35 - Did WW2 spending end the depression?
17:20 - Investment boom
20:56 - The Keynesian mythology
24:33 - Questions
42:05 - End
