Status Updates From Freedom from Fear: The Amer...

At this moment Hoover stood on the shore of a political and ideological Rubicon...Sometimes lumped together as Hoover's second program against the Depression, these measures would eventually help to revolutionize the American financial world. They would also lay the groundwork for a broader restructuring of government's role in many other sectors of American life, a restructuring known as the New Deal.

the Allies had once more than once offered to relax their demands on Germany, but only if their own obligations to the US could be forgiven...Iron-toothed insistence on full payment of the debts thus became not only a financial issue but a political and a psychological issue as well, a totem of disgust with corrupt Europe,...and of provincial America's determination to be suckered by silky international financiers.

One obvious way to relieve the pressure on the beleaguered Germans and Austrians was to break the chain by repudiating or suspending those obligations...Hoover was already exploring the idea on his own, but he reminded Lamont of its political explosiveness. "Sitting in New York, as you do, you have no idea what the sentiment of the country at large is on these inter-governmental debts."

The hugger-mugger of partisan politics continued to offend him. He remained a manager, not a politician. Perhaps the long adjournment of Congress even struck him as an opportunity to take charge of the antidepression battle without being pestered by nattering, grandstanding legislators. The virulence of Democratic antagonism, a sorely beset Hoover complained in his memoirs, "no man could measure or conciliate."

At this late date in March 1931, nearly a year and a half after the stock market crash, they still had no coherent analysis of what was happening and no agreed plan of action.