Whew.
Kevin Drum adds, "So yes: things are much better today then they were in 1933. Still, whenever I look at comparisons like this, I'm always struck by one way in which our situation today is worse. In 1933, nobody really knew what to do about a massive, persistent economic downturn. Keynes's theories hadn't yet gained wide currency, and conventional wisdom of the day was uniformly unhelpful. Certainly FDR was never a deliberate Keynesian: He did end up spending a lot of money, but mainly because he wanted to help people, not because he really thought that deficit spending per se was the answer to our problems. So in some sense it's forgivable that they didn't do a better job of combatting the Great Depression. They really didn't know any better."
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