My response:

I can't address the issue of "failing businesses" because the closest number I can find to what you are showing me with that "50% failure" figure is where, by 1940, 51.2% of all NEW businesses had failed within their first year of operation beginning in 1929. Otherwise, I can't find anything that proves or disproves your numbers.

That aside, I WILL address unemployment... again. Yes, by the end of 1939 we STILL had an unemployment rate of more than 17% and it had been as high as 19% at the end of the Roosevelt recession in 1938. No question, that is TOO high of a percentage to justify anyone saying the times weren't tough all over ("...brother, can you spare a dime?"). But it is STILL lower than the rate was in 1933! That percentage was 24.9%! Fully one quarter of the entire nation's workforce was unemployed. (my figures come from HERE)

My point? The New Deal didn't eliminate unemployment... but the numbers FELL, slow and steady, but they fell. At NO point in the New Deal Administrations do we see unemployment as HIGH as it was when FDR took office, and the only RISE in unemployment comes at the end of the '37 recession.

AGAIN, something worked. Did it work fast enough? Probably not. Is there a possibility that one "fix" was interfering with another? Certainly. Can arguments be made that things could have moved faster if alternative policies were employed? Yes indeed... but no certainty can be gained by making those arguments because SOMETHING WORKED. GDP rose and unemployment fell. Annual salaries went up and with them, annual retail and wholesale receipts. Nothing to compare with what came after the war... but who would have expected THAT in 1932? The very means to build the things we would be building 16 years later didn't exist.

As for banks, I can show you HERE that between 1929 and 1933, 15,000+ banks in this country simply FAILED. From March of '33 to the end of WWII (FDR's total terms), less than 200 failed. Is this a result the New Deal program known as FDIC? Is this a result of New Deal legislation regulating how banks market their loans? Is this the result of SEC regulations about where and when a bank can invest its resources? If ANY of your answers are YES, then we have another example of New Deal success, don't we?

Now, if you are going to take the Constitutionalist's view and cry out against Federal intervention in areas it has no right intervening, then we'll have to have another debate about which is more important to the American society as a whole... failed banks and lost securities or complete "hands off" policies by the Feds as provided in the Constitution. Either way, it isn't the topic here.

The topic here is: What DID work to alleviate the problems of the depression and what DIDN'T work. I can't show complete success, as I have stated time and time again... but I can show improvement and growth where there was none before. That tells me something worked, and that something was implemented during the New Deal.

I'm waiting for YOU to show me where laissez faire worked (or was working) prior to the New Deal. Where is your evidence that less government intervention and more free-market mentality did a better job than Roosevelt?