The Moral Economy of Money between the Gold Standard and the New Deal

In this article, I show that Depression-era popular opposition to gold standard orthodoxy had an identifiable impact on New Deal policy. Popular pressure was rooted in a political-economic vision I call the moral economy of money. The moral economy of money included a critique of the gold standard and creditor classes and advocated a democratization of control over money and credit to restore social justice. Against many odds, Roosevelt narrowly defeated congressional majorities connected to popular groups bent on mandating Treasury currency issue. At the same time, he pioneered a discourse that became generalized in the following decades and discouraged a reemergence of the moral economy of money.