For most, a round of Monopoly doesn’t conjure up images of the hardships suffered in America during the Great Depression.
Last night, though, in the opening plenary address of the George Washington Forum, Amity Shlaes used the well-known board game to lay the foundation of her primary argument.
She proposed that the New Deal, a program created by former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his “Brains Trust,” did not help the recovery from the Great Depression but rather prolonged it.
Her talk was titled “Obama Plays Monopoly: The Great Depression Revisited.”
Shlaes has done research on the topic of the Great Depression and the New Deal, and in 2008 published a book called The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression on FDR’s policy and its effects on society. She currently directs the 4% Project at the George W. Bush Presidential Center and writes a syndicated column for Bloomberg News. In the past, she has worked at the Council on Foreign Relations and on The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board.
In her address, Shlaes summed up what she called the “official version” of the events of the Great Depression in terms of Monopoly.
“In America, in the ’30s, we were failing, because we had no bank,” she said. “And the New Dealers, specifically Roosevelt, materialized to be that bank.”
Shlaes said her research indicated an entirely different story, one that contradicted the “traditional reading” of the Great Depression.
“After two or three years of digging around, I discerned one big theme: government prevented recovery,” she said.
Shlaes criticized FDR’s policy primarily because of the amount of discretion he had in determining monetary policy. She recounted one story in which he had the price of gold raised by 21 cents. When asked why he chose that number, he replied that 21 was seven times three, and three was a lucky number.
This arbitrary decision-making and experimentation, she argued, had a negative effect and prolonged the recovery.
“It’s kind of a hubris for us to assume that we can just do these experiments whenever we want,” she said.
Shlaes made several parallels between the New Deal and America’s current economic situation.
“Modern behavior of the government comes out of New Deal precedent and New Deal behaviors,” she said.
Her lecture was the first of seven debates and discussions that will occur this weekend as part of a George Washington Forum conference titled “The Great Depression Revisited.” The address was held in the Baker University Center Theatre and was attended by about 65 people.
The conference’s theme was inspired by the current financial crisis and the disagreement between expert economic and historians over the Great Depression and how America got out of it, said Robert Ingram, associate professor of history and founding director of the George Washington Forum.
“(The conference’s) impetus should be evident: The current financial crisis in which we live, or rather, the financial crisis in which we have been living for nearly a half-decade now,” he said.
Shlaes’ presentation inspired a lively Q-and-A session with the audience, with some questioners candidly opposing her findings and assertion that the country should rely significantly on small businesses to drive the economic recovery.
David Beito, a professor of history at the University of Alabama, said he agreed with many of Shlaes’ ideas.
“Her knowledge of this period is quite obviously wide-ranging and witty,” he said.
Beito will speak at 3 p.m. today in 242 Baker Center as part of the fifth plenary address in the conference. A schedule of all the debates can be found online at http://www.ohio.edu/washingtonforum/events.html.
bv111010@ohiou.edu
