Mark Spitznagel, author of The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World writes in Investor’s Business Daily:
Until we learn from the past, we will continue to expose ourselves to devastating booms and busts. The Bernanke-led Fed has only exacerbated the problem, leading us to the brink of an even worse correction.
To capture the lessons learned, we turn to a scholar of the Great Depression: Murray Rothbard of the Austrian School of Economics, who refutes the common misconception that “laissez-faire capitalism was to blame.”
His contrarian and far less popular — yet more accurate — view is that the booms and busts of the business cycle result from shocks to the system caused by monetary intervention.
Specifically, Rothbard blames the 1929 Crash on loose monetary policy during the 1920s. For Rothbard, the boom was the problem; once the Fed pushed asset prices up to unsustainable levels, a crash was inevitable.
Without the meddling of central-bank intervention, the market — like any natural homeostatic system — can reestablish equilibrium on its own by allowing its natural entrepreneurial “governors” to work. Greater savings prompts longer-term production for future greater consumption (and the inverse). The natural order trumps intervention every time.
