The Forgotten Man - Post 2

There are two other things that I thought were excellent about Amity Shlaes book on the depression.

First, she spends a lot of time explaining how the FDR people aggressively used legal tactics to move their political philosophies forward.  But at the same time she also details how completely silly their tax philosophies were.  The FDR people assumed the economy was a lever that they could manipulate (as did Hoover) - the difference being that their perception of what was permissible was quite different.  Lord Acton's phrase about power comes to mind.  The legal efforts to get Samuel Insul and Andrew Mellon and the Schechter family are three examples and well detailed in the book.

Second, at the end of the book she goes through in pretty good detail what happened to many of the major characters in the book.   That was a good way to finish off the narrative but it also tied together some important issues.

Although Shlaes does not make the connection but I did between the FDR people and the current Administration.  Both seemed to care more about their agenda than the constitutional limits that should define the system.  That was Sumner's point in his essay that gave the title to the book - and would that more elected officials understand the moral hazards of operating outside reasonable limits.