YOU MAY HAVE COME ACROSS THIS QUOTE BEFORE

Conservatives love to post this quote from FDR's Sec. of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr.:

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong … somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot."

According to Eliot Janeway, Morgenthau was pretty much an economics dope:

Instead of listening to Keynes or Fisher, Roosevelt allowed himself to be influenced by Henry Morgenthau, Jr., his intellectual valet de chambre in matters involving the application of intellect to finance (neither of which area of activity had the slightest interest for FDR except as means to ends or as necessary evils). Each and every idea that Morgenthau promoted through his special relationship with Roosevelt turned out to be a mistake: his final scheme for the de-industrialization of Germany was merely the best-known because the most conspicuously and authentically his own creation. But to the extent that the various "spend—lend" experiments of the New Deal proved to have come too late and to have done too little, the chief engineer of the roadblock against them was invariably the stubborn, suspicious, loyal and devoted lieutenant who divided his time between command of the Treasury and attendance at the bedside. And, to the extent that the novel monetary and economic experiments of the New Deal were neutralized, their innocent but ignorant saboteur was invariably this familiar of Roosevelt's. His inability to understand or accept new ideas prevented the fiscal follow-through from the Treasury which is the precondition of success for any monetary or economic experimentation. (p. 180)