アメリカ大恐慌下における経済政策ビジョンをめぐるエリートと民衆の交錯(大会報告・共通論題:1930年代における経済政策思想の転換-危機下の社会問題を視点として-,2009年度政治経済学・経済史学会秋季学術大会)

抄録

Many students of the New Deal have focused largely on the elites inside the New Deal bureaucracy formed after Franklin D. Roosevelt came to power, who presented a range of policy visions. This scrutiny of the mood and frustrations at the grass-roots level during the depression has established that those elites who could understand and echo the true feelings of the people in both metropolitan and rural areas were accepted as genuine representatives of the people. I describe these elites as "elites taking the side of the people." Economically, the New Deal started as a mixture of reflationary policies, abandoning the gold standard, devaluing the dollar by up to 40%, and refusal to participate in currency stabilization at the World Economic Conference in London in order to raise domestic price levels. Farmers in the Midwest desperately needed inflation, because many had suffered land foreclosure and they could not hope for the better future without drastic government measures. They found in Milo Reno, the leader of the Farmers Holiday Association, their genuine spokesman. Additionally, economist Irving Fisher tried to persuade Roosevelt of the validity of his debt-deflation theory, in which effort he considered he had been partially successful. Unlike Herbert Hoover, Roosevelt departed from the gold standard myth rather early and adopted an expansionary financial policy. Just like Hoover, however, Roosevelt was a firm believer in the doctrine of the balanced budget. Although among other policies his agricultural and work relief expenditures were powerful enough stimuli to bring about business recovery after 1933, at the same time he resorted to heavy tax increases. Consequently, the net contribution of the Roosevelt budget to national income was not large enough to prevent further recession, and after the 1937-38 recession, there was nationwide debate on how to escape from this situation. Farmers and organized labor did not participate in this debate, but economists and politicians in and around the administration and representatives from major trade associations did, and Roosevelt was persuaded to order a major expansion of relief and public works in 1938 and after. Further, it may be wrong to judge the role of the New Deal expenditures as too small, because as a result of the experience of severe depression individuals and corporations alike made every effort to clear their debt, leaving government borrowing from banks the only available substitute engine for economic recovery.