psychology

In his run for the Presidency against Herbert Hoover in 1932, on economics Franklin D. Roosevelt

had a breezy and disconcerting ability to put forward contradictory policies without the slightest embarrassment. So while he pledged to increase federal relief for unemployment, supported higher tariffs, government development of power projects, increased regulation of securities markets, and the separation of commercial and investment banking, he also criticized Hoover for fiscal extravagance, accused him of encouraging inflation, and promised to balance the budget and commit himself to "sound money." But voters did not care about consistency, they wanted bold action. In November 1932, Roosevelt got 22.8 million votes against Hoover's 15.7 million, the greatest electoral sweep since Lincoln beat McClellan in 1864.

- Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance, 2009, p. 442

F.D.R. ranks 3rd best out of 42 Presidents; Hoover ranks 34th. Details here. 

An earlier reference to F.D.R. here.

turbulent pushing busybody

[In 1924] To everyone's surprise, Winston Churchill was appointed chancellor of the exchequer, the second most powerful position in government.
No one was more taken aback by the appointment than Churchill himself. He was then a few days short of fifty. After a spectacular early career—home secretary at the age of thirty-five and first lord of the admiralty in 1911—he had fallen on hard times. The debacle at Gallipoli in 1915 had been a turning point. Politically damaged, he had gone off to fight on the Western Front, continued to deliver his brilliant speeches, and had become a follower of Lloyd George; when the "Welsh Wizard" was ousted in 1922, Churchill had lost his seat in Parliament and spent the next two years trying to rehabilitate himself.
It was a daunting task. Within political circles, he was almost universally distrusted as a man who had changed parties not just once, but twice. In 1903, after the Tories had split over free trade and their political fortunes seemed bleak, he had crossed the floor to join the Liberals, becoming a junior minister in barely two years. Now again as the Liberals were being shunted into the political wilderness, he had abandoned them—although for the sake of form he did not officially join the Conservatives for several more years. Many people thought the vaulting ambitions and poor judgement were the hereditary traits of the Churchills, echoing Gladstone's verdict, "The was never a Churchill, from John Marlborough down, that had either morals or principles."

- Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke The World, 2009, p.222

An earlier reference to Churchill here.

over his head

Woman burning money in Weimar Germany. In post War War I Germany, Rudolf von Havenstein presided over the single biggest currency debasement in history, but refused to accept responsibility for the debacle.

There was something terribly tragic about this deeply well-intentioned man. Not simply a dutiful bureaucrat, he was by all accounts a wonderful human being, to Max Warburg "an extraordinary sympathetic personality, with an unbending sense of duty and honorable character." He was universally admired, kind, principled, and considerate, always living up to the highest virtues of his class. During the war, while most households supplemented their rations by buying under the counter, Von Havenstein not only refused to use the black market, but even donated some of his own paltry bread and meat ration stamps to the poor. In the last year, however, he seemed to have lost his grip on reality—some said that the pressure he was under had made him prematurely senile—and a few mourned his passing.

- Liaquat Ahamed in Lords of Finance on Von Havenstein, German Reichsbank Central Banker, who was "a true gentleman of the old school, kind, courteous, but completely out of his depth." [p. 187, 188, 190]

aftermath

After World War I, not only had Britain's place in the world changed, but British society had also been transformed by the war:

The aristocracy that had ruled Britain for much of the previous century had been badly damaged—as one contemporary author wrote, albeit with some exaggeration, "In the useless slaughter of the Guards on the Somme, or of the Rifle Brigade in Hooge Wood, half the great families, heirs of large estates and wealth, perished without a cry." After enduring savage losses in the fighting—the casualty rate had been three times heavier among junior officers, many of them aristocrats, than among enlisted men—the old elite had also been hurt by wartime inflation and was now being decimated by postwar economic dislocations. Land prices had collapsed and many large estates been put up for auction. In place of the old and confident ruling class, a whole new breed—"hard-faced men who had looked as if they had done well out of the war," as one eminent politician described his new colleagues in the House of Commons—had come to power.

- Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke The World, 2009, pp. 136-7