The New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression

Seeing as per rules I am not allowed to rebuttal, I will simply make my case...BOP: Audience please note: if you find during the course of this debate that you agree with me, you must vote for me, but if you think that it had no impact, you must vote for me. You can only vote for my opponent if 1) he shows a causal link and 2) shows that all policies for the New Deal were bad. Anything short of this, I win. My opponent has massive BOP indeed! Economic Facts:I want to establish some objective economic facts before we continue. They are important for the basis of this case. 1) Supply and demand are NOT laws. Laws are always true, whereas supply and demand are only concepts, and are even contested by other economists as to their legitimacy. We have no idea if they even exist, and they make economists accept a generality over precision. 2) A good piece of evidence will be expert testimony but also expert consensus to prevent junk research and 3) incentives only influence actions. They do not GUARENTEE actions. So if I tell you if we drop capital gains taxes we'll offer incentives for more investment in the economy, it is entirely possible (due to the lack of guarantee) that this never happens. -- http://en.wikipedia.org...;Got it? OKAY! Now! There are two major schools of thought for economics...1 is New Kenysianism, and the other is Neoclassicalism. The rest are outside mainstream economics. So to prevent fringe groups we'll assume that these two are most inline with economic thought today Both Schools of Thought Concur, that the New Deal was not the Problem but Other Factors Were!The most noted Neoclassical icon is without a doubt Milton Friedman, who faulted the inaction of the federal reserve for solving the issue. While Kensyians claim that a massive decline of income fixed a new equilibrium rate at a much smaller level, thus beginning the decline of the economy. How do they fix it? Spend more... Monetarists seem to agree that state intervention in this case to stop Bank runs was justified. They simply would have issues emergency loans on the open market (which would have mean't the fed would intervene). Now, it is important to note, that the Fed does NOT in fact answer to the president, they make their own policies and respond as they see fit. -- http://en.wikipedia.org...They instead answer to Congress, while the President can approve/nominate those sitting in power in the fed, it requires Senate approval. -- http://en.wikipedia.org...For my final point, aside from the fact that for BOP to be met, causational data must be shown, and anything less than this means I win, I would like to point out to the general trend in what economists think of the New Deal and it's impacts ... and I quote: “In a survey of economic historians conducted by Robert Whaples, Professor of Economics at Wake Forest University, anonymous questionnaires were sent to members of the Economic History Association. Members were asked to either disagree, agree, or agree with provisos with the statement that read: "Taken as a whole, government policies of the New Deal served to lengthen and deepen the Great Depression." While only 6% of economic historians who worked in the history department of their universities agreed with the statement, 27% of those that work in the economics department agreed. Almost an identical percent of the two groups (21% and 22%) agreed with the statement "with provisos" (a conditional stipulation), while 74% of those who worked in the history department, and 51% in the economic department disagreed with the statement outright.” -- http://en.wikipedia.org... In short, those who oppose the New Deal and claim it deepens and worsens the Great Depression are a fringe group. There is little evidence for this, economists agree this isn't true, and it's the one time Kenysians and Neoclassicals actually agree on something. I think that says a lot when to thoughts that are polar opposits kinda agree on something no? Thank you!