(This post completes my three‐part discussion of the “regime uncertainty” hypothesis, according to which the
New Deal hampered recovery by causing businessmen to fear policy changes that might render their investments unprofitable. Links to the previous posts about regime uncertainty, and to the other posts of my series on The New Deal and Recovery
, occur at the end of this post.)
Proving It
Nothing seems more plausible, on its face, than the claim that policy shocks like those we’ve surveyed, coming as they did from a president who was often openly hostile to businessmen, discouraged investment. It’s no doubt largely owing to this, and to businessmen’s own insistence that New Deal policies frightened them, that the regime uncertainty hypothesis has gained adherents among economists.
New Deal hampered recovery by causing businessmen to fear policy changes that might render their investments unprofitable.)
Insull s Monstrosity
The 1935 Revenue Act wasn t the only measure that had businessmen and investors shuddering that August. Less than a week after it became law, FDR signed the still-more controversial Public Utility Holding Company Act, granting the SEC the power to break up the nation s utility holding companies.
On the eve of the Depression, Paul Mahoney explains, most U.S. electric and gas companies were directly controlled by trusts or holding companies. Groups of smaller utility holding companies were in turn controlled by a smaller number of larger holding companies, and so on for several layers. Three gigantic holding companies at the apex of this holding company pyramid ultimately controlled more than 80 percent of the nation s power companies.
The New Deal and Recovery, Part 12: Fear Itself SHARE This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. …[T]he only thing we have to fear is fear itself. FDR, in his first inaugural address. There is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain. Thomas Hobbes, on the state of nature, in
Leviathan.
Not the Sum of its Parts
So far, I ve tended to look at the New Deal as a set or sequence of distinct government policies and programs, remarking on how each either contributed to or hampered economic recovery. I ve also dealt only with those New Deal policies generally understood to have had promoting recovery as their aim.
The New Deal and Recovery, Part 10: The Roosevelt Recession SHARE
By the start of 1937, things were looking up for the U.S. economy. Although the Supreme Court had struck down both the NIRA and the AAA the chief pillars of the original New Deal s recovery plan some time earlier, like a glider released by its tow plane, the recovery itself kept going.
Indeed, the glider analogy doesn t quite work, because instead of gradually declining, economic activity started rising faster than ever: whereas in 1934 and 1935 real GNP grew by 7.7 and 8.1 percent, respectively, in 1936 it grew by a whopping
14.1 percent. Between May 1935, when the NIRA was struck down, and April 1937, unemployment fell by a third as compared to a 28 percent decline while the NRA codes were in effect. Bank lending, long stagnant, also started to revive. And the stock market, which bounced around but otherwise made little headway while the NRA did its thing, rose by a hefty 70 percent.[1]