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.
Recorded at the Toronto Stock Exchange; September 16-17, 1999.
Recorded at the Toronto Stock Exchange; September 16-17, 1999.
Tragically, it is in the nature of government, when its failures are exposed, to claim that if only it had more power it could have performed its duties in the manner it had promised.
But still more disastrous than the impoverishment the boom produces are its moral ravages. It makes people despondent and dispirited.
Bob Higgs' 1997 article "Regime Uncertainty," now appears in slightly revised form as the first chapter of his 2006 book Depression, War, and Cold War.
