Question

Which quotation sums up Herbert Hoover’s view of the Great Depression in 1933

Answer 1

These two quotes pronounced by President Herbert Hoover, express his viewpoint on the Great Depression and his opinion about the different formulas adopted to overcome it:  

• "Let me remind you that credit is the lifeblood of business, the lifeblood of prices and jobs. "
• "You cannot extend the mastery of government over the daily life of a people without somewhere making it master of people's souls and thoughts.… Every step in that direction poisons the very roots of liberalism. It poisons political equality, free speech, free press, and equality of opportunity. It is the road not to more liberty but to less liberty."

Hoover became one of the main detractors of Roosevelt's New Deal which,  based on Keynesian economics, fostered goverment interventionism in order to boost the depressed demand levels as the mechanism to create employment and economic growth. Such interventionism was materialized by increasing public spending.

In opposition, supporters of free markets and laisez-faire economic policies, such as Hoover, criticized this recovery plan because they believed that markets on their own would reach the most efficient outcomes and that the country would get innecessarily indebted. Moreover, they believed that the situation would be worsened by interventionist policies that hampered certain individual liberties.