When John Maynard Keynes came to Washington in 1934 to persuade President Franklin Roosevelt to spend more to revive the US economy, Roosevelt didn't pay the British economist much attention, Thomas Worsley recalls. He hopes President Barack Obama won't repeat Roosevelt's mistake.

Worsley, then a 23-year-old about to take a job in the Treasury Department, says Roosevelt balked at too much economic stimulus, and even allowed conservative Democrats to talk him into reining in federal outlays in 1937.

Now, at 97, Worsley is watching as Obama wrestles with the deepest economic slump since the Great Depression and is coming under fire from critics at home and abroad over his spending plans. Ultimately, Worsley said, only World War II delivered the US from its hard economic times, and he advises Obama to keep pumping money into the economy.