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Defining a Depression

Anybody who bases their "analysis" of the Great Depression on wing-nut rags like "FDR's Folly".

It drives free market true-believers and gold-standard nutjobs crazy that FDR turned an economic basket-case in the the world's premier superpower with policies which violate much of what they believe in. Hence the last 60 years of right-wing revisionist histories attempting to prove that FDR's succress didn't really happen.

FDR's economy grew by an average of over 8% per year in the 1930s. GDP had recovered to 1928 levels by 1936, at which point many government programs were cancelled, leading to another slowdown, a new set of government programs and continued recovery. There is no better refutation of pure free market capitalism than the laboratory results of the 1920s-30s.

International trade was the one area of the economy which did not recover, costing roughly 15% in lost output and employment. Not until the end of WWII was a new international trade system put in place.

Perhaps FDR should have put more effort into reviving trade in the 1930s.