The New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression

Rebuttals: First of all, my opponent seems to be trying to fix the rules in his favour (again with all due respect), because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and because of what I have shown earlier, he has BOP. Because of this, I am dependant more-so on his own argument as opposed to making my own. This should have been pretty apparent if he is claiming that not only was the New Deal a failure, but worse than that; it was part of the problem with regards to the Great Depression. I already noted this in the first round, and as such this claim is absurd. Again, voters, you decide. Please note, he never corrected what I outlined as BOP in round 2. Furthermore, if I countered in round 2 that “correlation is not causation” this would have been voiding the rules, and thus I would have lost. Obviously my opponent I don't think intentionally meant to do this, but denouncing this is kinda silly considering he does have BOP. My Argument Concerning Banking Reforms My opponent concedes that I did in fact note that Banking reform was critical in correcting the Great Depression. He completely dropped my other point, that before the New Deal over 500 banks went out a year, destabilizing the economy. After, less than 10 went out of businesses, preventing credit crunches. I noted this all earlier! He simply states I didn't, but I in fact did in round 3. My Opponent Claims that Banking Reform was Only One Aspect of the New Deal: It was, but it was the biggest part of the New Deal in determining it's success. Again, most economists agree that this was a major factor in re-stabilizing the economy, and preventing bank runs, my opponent completely dropped the fact that this is the one time neoclassical thinkers and Keynesian thinkers actually agree on something; the prevention of Bank Runs and credit crunches were essential to turning around the economy. In short, I made an explanation as to why this was most important, my opponent failed to do the same. -- http://en.wikipedia.org... My Opponent Claims We Have to Take the Big Picture Approach to the New Deal: I agree .. stopping 500 bank runs/year is kinda a big deal. My opponent dropped this point. He Claims That The Stock Market didn't Recover Quickly: But my opponent does concede that it did in fact recover. Furthermore, his graph is deliberately deceiving, he's forgetting that the 20's were known as the “Roaring 20's” which was a time of unprecedented economic prosperity. Comparing the recovery, to the peak of one of the highest times in economic history is more than unfair; it's disingenuous. -- http://en.wikipedia.org... Even by his own graph, lets consider that the New Deal came into power 1933, it shows that the first hundred days were a success, and that by the year 37-38, even with the mini recession that happened, the economy was still doing better than the earlier part of the 20's era. In short, even his own graph shows it worked. It wasn't fast ... but no one said it would be, it just prevented the slide further into the depression. Finally, this is a strawman anyways, because even though I pointed out that he made a causational fallacy, he never rebuttaled it, and instead revert to the stock market. My Opponent Drops Arguments: I noted with agriculture, minimum wage, and industry that he did not in fact win there, but made the causation fallacy the audience will recognize. I rebuttaled him with correlation is not causation, as such he should show causation. He has not, and thus he actually loses here. Gold Standard: No, this is not a fallacy of ad populum. If I had said “a majority of people support not going back to the gold standard” that would be. What I made was an appeal to authority (that economists rejected the gold standard together) as all expert testimony is an appeal to authority. The question is if it is appropriate or not, which being economists, and economic historians, I see no reason not to think they are inappropriate to consider their views, they are experts on this after all. My opponent is wrong on the ad populum fallacy. This is not it, at best it is an appeal to authority, the thing is this is a justified one. For more see: http://www.nizkor.org... and http://www.nizkor.org... if you do not believe me. My opponent drops that economists universally reject Austrian economics ideology of the gold standard. Furthermore, FDR NEVER confiscated gold. He prevented people from exchanging fiat bank notes from the Reserve for Reserve Gold instead. Not the other way around. My opponent is actually factually wrong here, and it in fact alleviated the credit pressure put on the reserves in the first place See here: http://en.wikipedia.org... In fact his source makes no sense, he claimed deflation occurred in 1937, his source claims it happened in 1931-32 .. wut? This is cherry-picking evidence. He didn't even find evidence that supported his point. War: I'm not even sure of what my opponent is even arguing here, my last rebuttal to him was “My opponent claims GDP raises due to production, sure, but the War would have drained the economy as well, so GDP would be legit to still use here.... You cannot look to investment because the markets in Europe and the War would also have an impact. Investors do not like to invest when the world is greatly unstable brought on by the war. My opponents stats are blatantly misleading. Again, correlation is not causation.”I agree with him that the war is draining, but that GDP is still fine to use, he never countered this and just continues on about how the war did nothing for the economy .. If anything his source proved my prior point: investors do not like to invest during war, so this is unfair to claim as part of the New Deal. This simply does not make sense and has nothing to do with FDR's new deal. Jobs: Correlation is not causation (he dropped this point) and he even admitted prior to this that FDR did in fact create jobs anyways to “buy votes” even if he hates corruption, he still has to admit in the first place that he made some kind of employment opportunity, which undermines his own point. Conclusion: I used economic consensus (dropped), with experts (Friedman, Keynes, etc) to prove my point. My opponent espouse a heterodox ideology rejected in economic. Overall, I remind the audience that this extraordinary claim that the New Deal was so bad it worsened the economy means he has extraordinary evidence, causation evidence in the form of a causation test. He failed to provide one at all. As such correlation is not causation, and my opponent failed to meet BOP. He even got his fallacies wrong when naming them.Thought experiment that my opponent never answered. Why is it then, that this one time the neoclassical ideology and the kenysian ideology, which is otherwise polar opposites, AGREE with one another on this issue? It has to be because my opponent is simply wrong, the New Deal didn't deepen the economic problems of previous lives. I'll let the audience decide what they think! Good day fella's!