Category: History

The Prima Facie Case that Great Depression Policy was Really Really Bad

Protestors outside the Bank of the United States after its failure in 1931

As a Canadian, it’s very strange hearing Americans talk about the Great Depression. The American public education system apparently has a monolithic view on the subject. Based purely on my interactions with people who have passed through that system, I imagine their kindergarten classes must be something like this:

TEACHER: Alright students, what’s 1 + 1?

STUDENTS: 2!

TEACHER: What’s 2 + 2?

STUDENTS: 4!

TEACHER: What do you call someone who doubts the efficacy of FDR’s policies in bringing an end to the Great Depression?

STUDENTS: Insane!

The Great Depression is a complex historical event, so the level of confidence I see from American laymen certainly makes it seem like they’ve been brainwashed from a young age. Maybe it’s just the sort of Americans who make internet comments.

If you believe that it is clearly and obviously true that (1) the New Deal ended the Great Depression or that (2) World War 2 ended the Great Depression, this article is for you. I’m not going to make a slam-dunk case against these notions; if you’re looking for one, you’ll need to read something far longer than a blog post. I recommend Robert Higgs or Bob Murphy. My goal here is to make the case that these ideas, far from being obvious, are actually very counter intuitive given the facts. (more…)

The post The Prima Facie Case that Great Depression Policy was Really Really Bad appeared first on The Economics Detective.

Alan Greenspan was Not a Free Market Guy

Alan Greenspan Cloud

Here’s a video I had made with the audio from my interview with Jimmy Morrison.

JIMMY: Ever since Alan Greenspan became the Federal Reserve Chairman in the mid-80s, he’s just been bailing out Wall Street every chance he can get: the S&L crisis, the Tequila crisis in Mexico in the early 90’s, and the dot com bubble. You know, whenever there’s a problem he just prints and prints and prints, and so over the course of twenty years, Wall Street realized this. They took the risk out of the situation because they could make money when things were good and then when things were bad, bailouts would be there.

GARRETT: Greenspan…had a reputation as a free-market guy. Some people got the wrong idea that Greenspan’s policies were somehow free market.

JIMMY: It’s funny, Greenspan wrote an article in favour of the gold standard in the 60s, and a lot of people point to that and talk about it, but when you look at somebody’s life, what matters is what their actual policies were and the things that they did. And the fact was that this is a guy that created bubble after bubble, and at the end he was creating a billion dollars a day just to keep everything going.

The post Alan Greenspan was Not a Free Market Guy appeared first on The Economics Detective.

Alan Greenspan was Not a Free Market Guy

Here’s a video I had made with the audio from my interview with Jimmy Morrison.

JIMMY: Ever since Alan Greenspan became the Federal Reserve Chairman in the mid-80s, he’s just been bailing out Wall Street every chance he can get: the S&L crisis, the Tequila crisis in Mexico in the early 90’s, and the dot com bubble. You know, whenever there’s a problem he just prints and prints and prints, and so over the course of twenty years, Wall Street realized this. They took the risk out of the situation because they could make money when things were good and then when things were bad, bailouts would be there.

GARRETT: Greenspan…had a reputation as a free-market guy. Some people got the wrong idea that Greenspan’s policies were somehow free market.

JIMMY: It’s funny, Greenspan wrote an article in favour of the gold standard in the 60s, and a lot of people point to that and talk about it, but when you look at somebody’s life, what matters is what their actual policies were and the things that they did. And the fact was that this is a guy that created bubble after bubble, and at the end he was creating a billion dollars a day just to keep everything going.

The post Alan Greenspan was Not a Free Market Guy appeared first on The Economics Detective.