Roosevelt had promised when he entered the White House in 1933 that he would balance the budget, something the previous president, Hoover, had failed to do. However, FDR had subsequently been influenced by the British economist John Maynard Keynes, who argued that in times of emergency (such as the Great Depression and the war), “public authority must be called in aid to create additional current incomes through the expenditure of borrowed or printed money.” In other words, Keynes urged deficit spending. This radical theory, along with the spectacular rise in economic activity spurred by the
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