Without the Federal Reserve, the New Deal Would Have Been Impossible Because Monetary Management Was the Core of the New Deal

One point may be made clear at once: without the Federal Reserve the New Deal would not have been possible. Monetary management was the core and the motor of the New Deal. The Federal Reserve provided the mechanism by which money was managed. It also was the veil by which these manipulations were concealed and given the illusion of normal fiscal operations in the traditional convention. It permitted the Administration to avoid the naked seizure and exercise of power. By filtering its activities through the monetary fabric,· government retained the appearance of functioning within the historic private enterprise system. Thus, government was never compelled to requisition or sequester property for its needs; it could always acquire it by purchase, since its means were unlimited.

—Elgin Groseclose, America's Money Machine: The Story of the Federal Reserve (Westport, CT: Arlington House Publishers, 1980), 185.