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Conversations with Tyler

George Selgin on the New Deal, Regime Uncertainty, and What Really Ended the Great Depression

Conversations with Tyler

Conversations with Tyler

Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2025

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

George Selgin has spent over four decades thinking about money, banking, and economic history, and Tyler has known him for nearly all of it. Selgin's new book False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933–1947 examines what the New Deal actually accomplished—and failed to accomplish—in confronting the Great Depression. 

Tyler and George discuss the surprising lack of fiscal and monetary stimulus in the New Deal, whether revaluing gold was really the best path to economic reflation, how much Glass-Steagall and other individual parts of the New Deal mattered, Keynes’ "very sound" advice to Roosevelt, why Hayek's analysis fell short, whether America would've done better with a more concentrated banking sector, how well the quantity theory of money holds up, his vision for a "night watchman" Fed, how many countries should dollarize, whether stablecoins should be allowed to pay interest, his stake in a fractional-reserve Andalusian donkey ownership scheme, why his Spanish vocabulary is particularly strong on plumbing, his ambivalence about the eurozone, what really got America out of the Great Depression, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel.

Recorded September 26th, 2025.

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Photo Credit: Richie Downs

Transcript

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0:00.0

Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,

0:09.4

bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems.

0:13.5

Learn more at Mercadis.org.

0:15.7

For a full transcript of every conversation enhanced with helpful links,

0:20.4

visit Conversationswithtyler.com.

0:27.4

Hello, everyone. Today I'm chatting with George Selgin. This is an episode of

0:31.9

Conversations with Tyler, but we're holding it at the Cato Institute. George has worked for

0:36.9

Cato. I'm a longtime associate. I'm still on their advisory board it at the Cato Institute. George has worked for Cato. I'm a long-time associate.

0:38.3

I'm still on their advisory board.

0:40.3

I thank Cato, our host, and we're both honored to be here.

0:44.3

I've known George well over 40 years, which I find stunning.

0:48.3

I first learned of him through his work on free banking,

0:51.3

and he was at NYU as a grad student, and I live nearby. He and I have had fruitful

0:55.7

discussions for a long time, but we've never taped anything. He has a new book out called

1:01.0

False Dawn, The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933 to 1947. It is the best book on its topic,

1:09.3

and I am proud to announce I have read all of George's books,

1:12.9

and they are all definitely worth reading. George, welcome.

1:16.1

Thank you, Tyler. It's very pleased to be back here at Cato and have a chance to have this conversation with you.

1:25.0

First question. If someone tried to sum up in as simple a sentence as possible,

1:30.1

what in the New Deal mattered? And they said, well, revaluing gold helped recovery a lot, and the NIRA

1:37.1

hurt recovery a fair amount. Is that the best quick summary they could produce? Of the whole thing?

1:43.3

Of the whole thing? The whole, the truth.

...

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