Sadly, most people have come to believe FDR saved the country from the great depression with all of his programs, and that Hoover sat idly by while the government did nothing to stop economic calamity.
I recently read George W Bush's Decision Point, and one line stood out to me.
"If we're really looking at another Great Depression", I said, "you can be damn sure I'm going to be Roosevelt not Hoover."
In books like Meltdown by Thomas E Woods, he goes into detail that its the intervention by Hoover that made the problems worse, and Roosevelt actually extended the Great Depression with his programs.
The sad thing is that President Bush made the problem worse in 2008. Failing companies should fail. If they believe they will be bailed out, then the have no reason to not engage in risky/bad behavior because there is no downside. People respond to incentives, and if incentives are that a big risk can have a high payoff with the government as a backstop then why not?
Bush even mentions being concerned about moral hazard, but decided to proceed with TARP. He cites jobs and other economic impacts as reasons he did it. Stupid.
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