The change in attitudes on macroeconomic security during the thirties was remarkable. At the beginning of the decade, it was almost uniformly assumed that cyclical fluctuations with accompanying price and employment uncertainties were inevitable. It was hoped by many that they would not be violent. But there was no general confidence that depressions could be tempered by government action without the risk of either eliminating the self-corrective features of the cycle or simply making things worse. By the end of the decade, under the combined influence of John Maynard Keynes and the sanguine
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