Money Makers: How Roosevelt and Keynes Ended the Depression, Defeated Fascism, and Secured a Prosperous Peace

Shortly after arriving in the White House in early 1933, Franklin Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard. His opponents thought his decision unwise at best, and ruinous at worst. But they could not have been more wrong.

With The Money Makers, Eric Rauchway tells the absorbing story of how FDR and his advisors pulled the levers of monetary policy to save the domestic economy and propel the United States to unprecedented prosperity and superpower status. Drawing on the ideas of the brilliant British economist John Maynard Keynes, among others, Roosevelt created the conditions for recovery from the Great Depression, deploying economic policy to fight the biggest threat then facing the nation: deflation.

Throughout the 1930s, he also had one eye on the increasingly dire situation in Europe. In order to defeat Hitler, Roosevelt turned again to monetary policy, sending dollars abroad to prop up the faltering economies of Britain and, beginning in 1941, the Soviet Union. FDR's fight against economic depression and his fight against fascism were indistinguishable. As Rauchway writes, Roosevelt wanted to ensure more than business recovery; he wanted to restore American economic and moral strength so the US could defend civilization itself. The economic and military alliance he created proved unbeatable-and also provided the foundation for decades of postwar prosperity. Indeed, Rauchway argues that Roosevelt's greatest legacy was his monetary policy. Even today, the Roosevelt dollar remains both the symbol and the catalyst of America's vast economic power.

The Money Makers restores the Roosevelt dollar to its central place in our understanding of FDR, the New Deal, and the economic history of twentieth-century America. We forget this history at our own peril. In revealing the roots of our postwar prosperity, Rauchway shows how we can recapture the abundance of that period in our own.


Author: Eric Rauchway
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 10/27/2015
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.20w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9780465049691


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 08/01/2015
Publishers Weekly 09/14/2015
Library Journal 09/15/2015 pg. 89
New York Times Book Review 11/22/2015 pg. 31
Choice 05/01/2016

About the Author
Eric Rauchway is a distinguished historian and expert on the Progressive and New Deal eras at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of several acclaimed books on the subject, including The Money Makers, The Great Depression and the New Deal, and Blessed Among Nations, and has contributed to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the New Republic, the Los Angeles Times, Dissent, and the American Prospect. He lives in Davis, California.