William Trufant Foster

[1] He was director of the Pollak Foundation of Economic Research from 1920 to 1950, in Newton, Massachusetts, where he emphasized the need to protect consumer interests.

[1] He collaborated with his Harvard classmate Waddill Catchings in a series of economics books that were highly influential in the United States in the 1920s.

[1] With Catchings, he was one of the leading pre-Keynesian economists, in the underconsumptionist tradition, advocating similar issues to Keynes such as the paradox of thrift and economic interventionism.

[1] Foster and Catchings rejected traditional laissez-faire economics and called for aggressive federal involvement to balance the economy lest destabilizing forces upset prosperity.

The theory strongly influenced the anti-depression programs of Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Marriner Eccles.