Booms and Busts

Sponsored by the Mises Institute and held in Houston, Texas; September 22-23, 1995.

Old Right journalist Garet Garrett described the New Deal as a revolution against America's tradition of private property, limited government, and the rule of law.

We find ourselves enormously worse off, our economic prospects diminished greatly, and our liberties throttled more tightly by an even bigger Leviathan, with nothing to show for it on the upside but the further enrichment of a handful of big bankers and other malefactors of great wealth and power.

If it were possible to lift real economic growth by means of money pumping, world poverty would have been eradicated a long time ago.

What is required is purging the economy of various false activities that severely undermine its ability to generate real wealth.

Instead of permitting the necessary economic adjustments to be made in the wake of this unsustainable boom, the political classes — and their court economists — insist on even more government spending, more debt, and more destruction of the dollar.

The Austrians (including me) who predicted these problems based on Greenspan's low-interest-rate policy know of course that the main cause was that low-interest-rate policy, with his numerous bailouts of failed financial institutions also creating a moral hazard that encouraged risky behavior.

1996 Mises Institute Supporters Summit, San Francisco, California; February 9-10, 1996.

Many people were outwitted by Madoff. Many more people are today being outwitted by the government and its central bank. And it will all end in disgrace and disaster, only on a far, far grander scale.

1998 Mises Institute Supporters Summit, Palm Springs, California; February 27-28, 1998.