Well, certainly, Massagat, if you want data or statistics here you go:
Quote:The common view among mainstream economists is that Roosevelt's New Deal policies either caused or accelerated the recovery, although his policies were never aggressive enough to bring the economy completely out of recession. Some economists have also called attention to the positive effects from expectations of reflation and rising nominal interest rates that Roosevelt's words and actions portended.[35][36] However, opposition from the new Conservative Coalition caused a rollback of the New Deal policies in early 1937, which caused a setback in the recovery.[37]
The common view among economic historians is that the Great Depression ended with the advent of World War II. Many economists believe that government spending on the war caused or at least accelerated recovery from the Great Depression. However, some consider that it did not play a very large role in the recovery, although it did help in reducing unemployment.[1][47][48]
The massive rearmament policies leading up to World War II helped stimulate the economies of Europe in 1937"39. By 1937, unemployment in Britain had fallen to 1.5 million. The mobilization of manpower following the outbreak of war in 1939 finally ended unemployment.[8]
America's late entry into the war in 1941 finally eliminated the last effects from the Great Depression and brought the unemployment rate down below 10%.[49] In the United States, massive war spending doubled economic growth rates, either masking the effects of the Depression or essentially ending the Depression. Businessmen ignored the mounting national debt and heavy new taxes, redoubling their efforts for greater output to take advantage of generous government contracts.
See all those little numbers, Massagat? Those are citations to references that support the position. in the article, which is Wikipedia's "Great Depression"--in other words, a lot of support.
Now if you go to the article, you'll find graphs, and you will see that America's GNP doubled between 1933 and 1940, under Roosevelt's stimulus policies. You will see that unemployment fell by 40% from about 25% to 15%. In molre detail,you will notice that GNProse steadily and unemployment fell steadily until 1937when the conservatives convinced FDR to stop his New Deal policies and implement conservative economics. Production promptly dove steeply and unemployment promptly rose steeply. FDR went back to New Deal policy and GNP started rising again and unemployment dropped. Did not look good for conservative orthodoxy.
As I said, WWII finally brought the world out of the Depression, and it was largely because it was a huge stimulus package, in which huge sums of GOVERNMENT SPENDING produced huge production, huge expansion of industry, and huge reemployment. I don't advocate putting ourselves in a situation where we have to spend on those particular goods and services again, but the principle remains that STIMULUS WORKS and conservative "let 'em all fail" economics does not.
Had Roosevelt been in a position to spend more, the Depression would have ended sooner. Obama is doing, and has done, the right thing. If he'd listened to the right, the economy would be in a death spiral now, failure dragging down all the businesses depending on the business that had just failed.
