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On the economic front, for example, facing a most urgent challenge then as of now, President Roosevelt immediately embarked upon a comprehensive program of fundamental reforms and of public works. For instance, he did not hesitate to close American banks, going as far as to declare a "bank holiday" from March 6, 1933 to March 14, 1933, in order to reorganize the banking system and to clean up the banks' books. The purpose, of course, was to renew public confidence in financial institutions and to reestablish the flow of credit and the level of spending in the economy.
Some seventy-six years later, it is fair to say that President Barack Obama was much less determined in dealing with a similar, serious banking crisis, firstly by reappointing or keeping officials close to the previous Bush administration (Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, etc.) and secondly, by prolonging Bush's policies of subsidizing “too big-to-fail” and “too big-to-manage” mega-banks with a minimum of conditions, instead of restructuring them and changing their business model.
See TheNewAmericanEmpire.
