He was also appointed US Economic Stabilizer in the last months of World War II, though Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman, soon eliminated this potentially powerful position.

Davis ran the Board until March 1945, when, seeing the end of the war in sight, Roosevelt named him Director of Economic Stabilization, to manage the return to a peace-time economy.

The news magazine Time described him variously as "rumple-haired", "dry-humored", "shaggy", "humane", "tendacious", "chunky", and "grizzled", but above-all patient and fair-minded.

[4] A 1941 Time article praised his "phenominal [sic] record' of "peacably unraveling the most tangled wrangle", and declared him "one of the brightest hopes of the US had in the murky field of industrial disputes.

"[5] While Roosevelt seemed to set up Davis as the 'czar' of post-war recovery by appointing him Economic Stabilizer, Harry Truman fired him within months of taking office, and eliminated his potentially powerful role.