The Fed

“We need to get the government out of our lives, out of our bedrooms, out of our walls, off our back, and out of foreign countries.

It is interesting to see the psychology at play here: give the banks more money or else the massive stimulus will fail due to "instability."

Lucas's view — namely, that the 1929 downturn would have been a run-of-the-mill depression, but the Fed's timidity turned it into the Great one — was popularized by Milton Friedman.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1934 Gold Reserve Act was the greatest theft of wealth I'm aware of in American history:

"The government doesn't create any real wealth, so how can an increase in government outlays revive the economy?"

In conclusion, Paul Krugman reverses cause and effect in his analysis, and he also fails to note the difference between private and government expenditures.

In reality, a house is a consumers' good, just like an automobile or a refrigerator.

All of these things deny the true desires of people — as revealed in market prices — and substitute the opinions of the elite and politically-powerful for the true desires of people.

"When the government runs up a deficit to fund 'stimulus' projects, all that really means is that it is forcing taxpayers to pay for projects that they wouldn't buy with their own money."

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