Booms and Busts

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.

I feel confident in claiming that the housing boom would not have occurred if money and banking had been left in the hands of the private sector, as opposed to the state-organized cartel that we currently "enjoy."

If we are really sincere about not wanting to repeat the 1930s, the political classes should do nothing but cut taxes and free the labor market — but otherwise do nothing to "help" the problem.

Creating programs outside of the markets to try to support illiquid assets undermines the objective signals of markets in which value is measured by the market price.

Speculative bubbles are financial events that do great damage not only to pocketbooks and balance sheets but to people's perspectives and values.

There is something government can do in the Austrian cure for a recession: radically remove itself from the economy.