AND THAT'S DESPITE 70 YEARS OF PROPAGANDA IN ITS FAVOR:

Did the New Deal Work? (Matthew Bandyk, April 11, 2008, US News)

Just how divided are experts? In 1995, economist Robert Whaples of Wake Forest University published a survey of academic economists that asked them if they agreed with the statement, "Taken as a whole, government policies of the New Deal served to lengthen and deepen the Great Depression." Fifty-one percent disagreed, and 49 percent agreed. Whaples today says that the New Deal remains a thorny issue for economists because it's so difficult to measure the effects it had on the country. "You need a credible model of the economy, and not everyone is going to agree on what that model should be," he says.

Yet most economists, including defenders of the New Deal, do agree that Roosevelt's policies were far from perfect. The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, in particular, gets a lot of blame. It created the National Recovery Administration, a federal bureaucracy that limited competition in various industries by setting prices and wages above market levels. The ensuing upward pressure on the price of goods and unemployment may have turned a bad situation worse. While it benefited some producers, the NRA's policies meant basic goods were more expensive for consumers and jobs harder to come by for people who were already in dire straits.

But the law was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1935, so some argue it did not last long enough to create severe damage.