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Arguably FDR stimulated the economy by allowing Pearl Harbor to happen see link below) and churning up the U.S. industrial might to bolster the war effort and therefore the economy.
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Source(s):
"FDR & PEARL HARBOR Did he know?"

http://ussslcca25.com/fdr1941.htm

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Most detailed analysis concludes that the New Deal included a number of stupid things that hurt, and a number of things that were good.

It has been claimed that some of his policies caused the depression to last longer than it would have otherwise - here's a recent example:

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx

Wikipedia links to another article that notes that the majority of economists do not agree with this perspective:

"The economy eventually recovered from the low point of the winter of 1932-33, with sustained improvement until 1937, when the Recession of 1937 brought back 1934 levels of unemployment.There is a broad consensus among scholars that the New Deal policies did not lengthen and deepen the depression; only 5% of professional historians and 27% of professional economists believe it served to lengthen and deepen the Great Depression." [1]."

Here is the article this quote is from:
http://eh.net/lists/archives/eh.res/feb-1997/0010.php


The bottom line is that people far more knowledgeable than you or I disagree on this subject matter as a whole.

A number of the policies were downright idiotic - one example was that they saw that when gold got more expensive, the economy tended to be stronger... so they bought up a lot of gold in order to increase the scarcity of it. Sure, it may have driven the price of gold up, but it didn't do anything for the economy. There are a number of other plans that were implemented that definitely were bad ideas - regulating prices on some items to remain high, for instance. As for good, Social Security has come from it, which has supported the livelihoods of millions upon millions of people with little to no other income, the FDIC was another major winning policy.

It is indeed common agreement, however, that World War II helped pull us out of the depression. The massive amount of labor required to build things as the military expanded were the primary driving factors in the economic growth coming out of the depression... but it is worth noting that there had been an uptick in the economy somewhat before the US entered the war.

There was also a period during the depression where things got a bit better:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gdp20-40.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Employment_Graph_-_1920_to_1940.svg

After rock bottom was hit, note that GDP was growing at a good clip. There was another major recession in the latter part of the depression, which, again, people can argue about all day long, but then the war came along and we were out of it.
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It's definitely not agreed upon. Many (most) give him credit for taking us out of it. He oversaw the boom in the economy that took us out of the great depression. He was the one that invested in the war industry that not only created jobs, but created so many jobs that there was a shortage of workers.
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