Booms and Busts

The government has tried to further manipulate the economy to compensate for the adverse effects of its printing of money.

The Augustan boom was partly the result of a heavy spending program.

I say to Judge Posner, look to Hayek on the business cycle, the way you did on law and economics.

The Austrian School has always had a rich conception of the structure of production.

In his speech at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the Fed chairman disappointed most pundits. He did not promise another massive infusion of fake money, i.e., QE3. I suspect that a strengthening in bank lending is an important factor behind the Fed's decision to postpone it.

People should live below their means during the recession.

Imagine, for just a moment, that US government debt were rated in the same way that municipal bonds or regular corporate debt are.

Because they can't find jobs, 85 percent of college grads move back in with their parents after they graduate.

Despite the billions and the debt, the depression was back. And it was not a new depression. It was the old one, which had not been driven away but merely hidden behind a curtain of 15 billion dollars of new government debt.

This article originally ran on Tuesday, February 17, 2009. It was near the low of the last stock-market cycle.