It is good to hear that people are remembering how to deal with bad economic times. If we are in something like the GD, we have a long tough path ahead. However, the article continues thee myth that FDR and the new deal helped us in any way. Quite to the contrary, he made things worse and kept the economy in the depression for 7 yrs. FDR launched the National Recovery Administration (NRA) in 1933. Roosevelt called it a ‘partnership in planning’. Others called it a step towards a managed (non free market) economy. Washington's planners controlled production in entire industries, while government-sponsored bodies set wages and prices. The smallest businesses were cajoled to sign government ‘codes’ on matters like a minimum wage and earned a useless Blue Eagle badge if they did so. Even Left-wing historians now concede the codes were a fiasco. By 1935, they ran to 13,000 pages of text, a classic example of bureaucracy gone mad. Companies were battling with red tape instead of investing for recovery. According to one economist, the NRA put the cost of doing business up by 40 per cent and many small enterprises went bankrupt — the worst possible scenario in the middle of a Depression. The only winners, inevitably, were the biggest businesses of all, for whom the NRA worked as a massive price-fixing cartel. By 1937, businesses were so constrained by red tape and bureaucracy that corporate confidence was shattered and the economy plunged back into the abyss, with profits down 80 per cent and more than 10million out of work. What saved the administration was the war. Without it, recovery would probably have been long delayed. Historians at the University of California say that by eviscerating small businesses and destroying confidence, the New Deal prolonged the slump by seven years.