By 1935, although the Treasury was still arguing that although “public works as a remedy for unemployment were quite futile,” government nonetheless still had a role to play in maintaining “the impetus of recovery” in specific areas of the country via spending. Indeed by 1937, the Treasury was willing to propose that a reserve fund of necessary public works be deliberately left not completed so that when a downturn worsened they could be released as a countercyclical measure. But even here, concerns with inflation arising from debt-financed expenditure and the need to pay back the accumulated debt limited the appeal of such logics, even in the midst of a deep depression.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 338