The New Deal did not end the Great Depression. This statement will come as no shock to FEE supporters, but it will to the many people who never encountered it before. Now people are encountering it — in newspaper columns and news-talk shows.
Economist Robert Higgs writes that a number of economists who have called themselves “free market” endorsed one statist scheme after another that lead the U.S. economy into the tank. Although he won’t mention names, nonetheless, they are legion, including one of Ronald Reagan’s chief economic advisors who now believes falling home prices have caused the [...]
6 January 2009
“President Bush will designate vast tracts of American-controlled Pacific Ocean islands, reefs, surface waters and sea floor as marine national monuments on Tuesday, limiting fishing, mining, oil exploration or other commercial activity, White House officials said Monday.” (New York Times, Tuesday)
Government knows best.
FEE Timely Classic
“Nature’s Entrepreneurs” by Terry Anderson and Donald Leal
“The inspector general of the Securities and Exchange Commission said yesterday that he is broadening his investigation into the agency’s failure to detect the alleged fraud committed by Bernard L. Madoff, examining whether the regulatory breakdown was isolated.” (Washington Post, Tuesday)
Our “protectors” blew it.
FEE Timely Classic
“In Bureaucracy We Trust?” by Roy E. Cordato
“Two weeks before assuming power, President-elect Barack Obama took his economic recovery package to Capitol Hill on Monday and worked to build a bipartisan coalition to endorse his plan of tax cuts and new spending with an urgent appeal ‘to break the momentum of this recession.’” (New York Times, Tuesday)
Still trying to turn stone into bread.
FEE Timely Classic
“What Spending and Deficits Do” by Henry Hazlitt
Ludwig von Mises: Buck Hills Lectures • June 1955
Henry Hazlitt Describes From Bretton Woods to World Inflation • July 1, 1983
A Letter From Ayn Rand to Leonard Read • August 1, 1946
Dwight Eisenhower Letter to Henry Hazlitt • November 28, 1952
Walter Cronkite Invites Henry Hazlitt to Dinner • June 3, 1965
Students today are often given a skewed account of the Great Depression of 1929-1941 that condemns free-market capitalism as the cause of, and promotes government intervention as the solution to, the economic hardships of the era. In this essay based on a popular lecture, FEE President Lawrence W. Reed debunks the conventional view and traces the central role that poor government policy played in fostering this legendary catastrophe.
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Fuzzy Thinking
We are certainly used to the fallacious Keynesian "economics" that pours forth from most of Paul Krugman's New York Times columns. That's bad enough. But dishonesty too? What's the excuse for that? In a recent column called "Fifty Hebert Hoovers," Krugman expressed fear that the nation's governors would follow in ...
With humility and honor I acknowledge this post from Pete Boettke at the always-worth-reading Austrian Economists blog. Thank you, Pete.
I spent much of my recent vacation reading Henry Hazlitt's chapter-by-chapter demolition of Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), The Failure of the "New Economics" (1959). I didn't expect to read the book cover to cover, but after only a few pages I had to keep ...
