{"id":52173,"date":"2020-04-04T17:11:39","date_gmt":"2020-04-04T22:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52173"},"modified":"2020-04-04T17:11:45","modified_gmt":"2020-04-04T22:11:45","slug":"the-lesson-of-a-crash-that-cured-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52173","title":{"rendered":"The Lesson of a Crash that Cured Itself"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fff.org\/explore-freedom\/article\/the-lesson-of-a-crash-that-cured-itself\/\">The Lesson of a Crash that Cured Itself<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>If a government wishes to alleviate, rather than aggravate, a depression, its only valid course is laissez-faire\u2014to leave the economy alone. Only if there is no interference, direct or threatened, with prices, wage rates and business liquidation, will the necessary adjustment proceed with smooth dispatch. \u2014 Murray Rothbard<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The economic disruption caused by the government\u2019s coronavirus clamp-down may lead to a deep recession or depression; arguably, it already has. President Trump\u2019s $2.2 trillion relief package indicates what his answer to such an economic disaster will be: mega-spending on hand-outs and social projects. Trump is setting himself up as a modern version of Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) whose New Deal programs defined 20th century America by diverting it from a largely free-market path down a largely statist one. Trump wants to be an activist president \u2014 the type that history books applaud. Congress\u2019s near-unanimous support of the relief bill means that no real brake will be applied on the speed or depth of federal spending. Few voices even question the need for government to lift up the economy by its bootstraps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Great Depression of the 1930s is often viewed as the gold standard for a federal response to an economic crisis. And, yet, FDR\u2019s strong-man policies ushered in a decade of economic misery that did not end until the jolt of a world war in which over 400,000 Americans were killed. Happily, a less bloody \u201csuccess\u201d story exists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The financial analyst and historian James Grant offers the do-nothing alternative in his path-breaking book\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.ca\/Forgotten-Depression-Crash-Cured-Itself\/dp\/1451686463\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Forgotten Depression. 1921: The Crash That Cured Itself.<\/em><\/a>\u00a0The crash of 1920-21 is called \u201cthe forgotten depression\u201d because it has almost vanished from history books. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Lesson of a Crash that Cured Itself If a government wishes to alleviate, rather than aggravate, a depression, its only valid course is laissez-faire\u2014to leave the economy alone. Only if there is no interference, direct or threatened, with prices, wage rates and business liquidation, will the necessary adjustment proceed with smooth dispatch. \u2014 Murray [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[383,2127,16156],"class_list":["post-52173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-great-depression","tag-interventionism","tag-wendy-mcelroy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52173"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52174,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52173\/revisions\/52174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}