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.
Efforts to avoid the agony of recession—policies that seek to prop up insolvent firms and maintain employment—will only ensure that more resources are squandered in unsustainable lines.
We are once again in a situation where the public and the economics profession have rushed to judge capitalism as the source of periodic and severe crises.
The original Misesian insight has withstood the test: it still seems that the Fed was a necessary condition for the worst speculative bubble in world history.
We can thus conclude that the gold standard, if not abused, is not conducive to boom-bust cycles.
