FDR’s Power Player
FDR is usually given the credit for saving America and capitalism from the Great Depression, winning WWII, and launching an amazing number of infrastructure improvements that America enjoys to this day. But it wouldn’t have happened without the can-do integrity of a single Texas entrepreneur, Jesse Holman Jones. One of America’s greatest unsung heroes, Jesse Jones led the transformative Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which financed America’s recovery and set the stage for its dominance on the world stage. Guest Steven Fenberg is the author of the book Unprecedented Power: Jesse Jones, Capitalism and the Common Good and is the foremost expert on Jones’ amazing legacy of public service. The RFC is the inspiration for current legislation (HR 4052) that would establish a national reconstruction bank able to rebuild America’s failing infrastructure. Macroeconomist Alphecca Muttardy of the Coalition for the National Infrastructure Bank talks with Ellen about that legislation, which would raise $5 trillion to repeat Jones’ transformative investments in America.