Down the memory hole

I've been pretty skeptical of Amity Shlaes' The Forgotten Man. I think it's well worth reading as political/economic history, but her thesis--that the uncertainty created by FDR's various regulatory adventures was a dominant cause of the Great Depression--seems wildly overblown.

Via Bryan Caplan, however, comes evidence that I may have been too hasty:

In November 1941, just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor propelled the United States into total war, the Fortune pollsters asked a sample of business executives a question that bears quite directly on the regime uncertainty at issue in this article. The question was “Which of the following comes closest to being your prediction of the kind of economic structure with which this country will emerge after the war?” The respondents were presented with four options, as follows (the percentage of respondents selecting that option as the closest to their own prediction is shown in brackets):

(1) A system of free enterprise restored very much along the prewar lines, with modifications to take care of conditions then current. [7.2 percent]

(2) An economic system in which government will take over many public services formerly under private management but still leave many opportunities for private enterprise. [52.4 percent]

(3) A semi-socialized society in which there will be very little room for the profit system to operate. [36.7 percent]

(4) A complete economic dictatorship along fascist or communist lines. [3.7 percent] (Cantril 1951, 175)

...If these poll data are even approximately indicative of the true expectations of American investors, then it is astonishing that the recovery of investment had proceeded as far as it had.

I still don't think Shlaes is right, and it's also not clear that you can simply blame FDR for the results in this pol. Collectivism was on the march throughout the world, and almost everyone thought it was The Future--even in those benighted parts of the world that had never heard of social security or the Hoover Dam. But I'm willing to assign a greater role to investment uncertainty than I was before.