FAILURE OF CAPITALISM? THE FAIRY TALE KNOWN AS NEW DEAL
FAILURE OF CAPITALISM? THE FAIRY TALE KNOWN AS NEW DEAL

Summary/Abstract: The starting point in writing this paper is the attempt to unravel and explain, probably one of the biggest myths of the twentieth century, namely the assertion that “…capitalism and the market economy were responsible for the Great Depression and only government intervention managed to bring America’s economic recovery” (Reed, 1998: 1). Therefore, using a prevalent inductive-subjective methodology, the purpose of this article is to dismantle the myth mentioned above by discerning and, subsequently, fixing, in a relatively brief but clear manner, with pertinent arguments, the link between it and the mechanism behind the development of the broader economic recovery program of the XXth century, generically known as the New Deal. The entire article is sketched in the spirit and under the mark of the Austrian School of economics. Therefore, the analysis clots and is strictly related to two prominent figures of the 1920-1940 period, namely Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

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