FDR on mortgages, gold, reflation, and labor standards

These two video clips represent early New Deal policy. The first is a radio address delivered some time after the collapse of the London Gold Conference of 1933. The conference had been set up under the outgoing Hoover administration. A leaked communication from President Roosevelt ended the conference. In it, Roosevelt indicated he did not support a quick return to the traditional gold standard and that domestic considerations outweighed international. New Deal policy favored "reflation," essentially raising prices and wages back to the pre-Depression level. This was to be done by various mechanisms including raising the price of gold and the cartel-like codes of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). Part of the idea was to relieve the burden of debtors (hence, references in the first clip to assistance to those whose mortgages were in default). Gold policy was based on theories that people really thought in gold terms (money was seen as just a representation of gold) and therefore raising the price of gold would lift all prices proportionally.

• Category

  News & Politics