Evidence receipt / belief
Published · transcript-backedGeorge Selgin: belief
15 Oct 2025 Conversations with Tyler George Selgin on the New Deal, Regime Uncertainty, and What Really Ended the Great Depression
“I think that the recapitalization program was one of the good things, one of the only things that the RFC did that helped end the Great Depression, by stabilizing the banking system and allowing more banks to reopen.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- George Selgin
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- belief
- Recorded
- 15 Oct 2025
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
Transcript context
…In principle, was recapitalizing the banks a good idea or a bad idea? Recapitalizing the banks was different from lending to them. That was a later program, and that worked. I think that helped. That was when the RFC actually bought shares in the banks and so raised their capital directly instead of lending to them. I think that the recapitalization program was one of the good things, one of the only things that the RFC did that helped end the Great Depression, by stabilizing the banking system and allowing more banks to reopen. I would rate that a successful program, but with the qualifier that the RFC did many things and grew into a vast agency, the biggest agency of the New Deal, and as such, it had more failures than successes. Agricultural Adjustment Act — good or bad?…
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