"You must realize how bad, temporarily, capitalism had become in public opinion. I remember seeing a poll of small town attitudes in local newspapers. They asked questions like "should we nationalize the banking system?" More than half of those editors, about the most conservative group in the world, were in favor of nationalizing the banking system. Father Coughlin, the Detroit demagogue who turned anti-Semitic, complained about "fountain pen money, the perpetrator of great wealth, the money changers in the temple." It was kind of a crude expansionism. Huey Long and "every man a millionaire," or whatever it was. So I would say that Keynes thought of himself as saving the system. And lots of the New Dealers ― original New Dealers, Veblenites, technocrats ― did not like Keynesian economics. They said "that is using palliatives, it's not getting rid of the wicked capitalistic ethos." Keynes told Roosevelt when he came here in 1933 that he needed to spend so much more per month in deficit spending. He gave very precise figures with great self-confidence."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from the United StatesJews from the United StatesEconomists from the United StatesNobel laureates in EconomicsPeople from Gary
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Interview with Parker in Randall E. Parker (ed.), Reflections on the Great Depression (2002)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Samuelson
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Paul Samuelson
Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) was an American economist. He was the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Economics.
119 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Paul Samuelson →
Related Quotes
"The General Theory caught most economists under the age of 35 with the unexpected virulence of a disease first attack…"
"Herein lies the secret of the General Theory. It is a badly written book, poorly organized; any layman who, beguiled …"
"Just as Hegel is said to have understood his philosophy for the first time when he read its French translation, Vilfr…"
"I was lucky to enter economics in 1932. Analytical economics was poised for its take-off. I faced a lovely vacuum tha…"
"The existence of analogies between central features of various theories implies the existence of a general theory whi…"
"The general method involved may be very simply stated. In cases where the equilibrium values of our variables can be …"
"In the preface to the reissue of Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, Frank Knight makes the penetrating observation that und…"
"Figure 12-6 pulls together in a simplified way the main elements of income determination. Without saving and investme…"
"I think the acceptance of "mathematical expectation of utility" or its "arithmetic mean" was an unthinking carryover …"
"Science is not art. Yet, despite the lack of complete identity between art and science, there is much in common among…"