All Posts Tagged With: "recession"

The Depression You’ve Never Heard Of: 1920-1921

When it comes to diagnosing the causes of the Great Depression and prescribing cures for our present recession, the pundits and economists from the biggest schools typically argue about two different types of intervention. Big-government Keynesians, such as Paul Krugman, argue for massive fiscal stimulus—that is, huge budget deficits—to fill the gap in aggregate demand. [...]

18Nov2009 | Robert P. Murphy | 1 comment | Continued

The Fatal Conceit

The politicians are confident that they can wisely spend trillions of your dollars. The arrogance of the political class is stunning.

17Jun2009 | John Stossel | 9 comments | Continued

The Current Economic Crisis and the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle

Richard Ebeling is completing his tenure as the president of FEE. This fall he will teach economics at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.
The current financial crisis emerged out of an economic boom that began in 2003 and saw rising stock values, increasing home prices, and high levels of employment and production. The upturn followed a [...]

1Jun2008 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | Continued

Something Besides Money Growth Causes Inflation? It Just Ain’t So!

Howard Baetjer, Jr. is a lecturer in economics at Towson University.
Some economic phenomena can result from a variety of causes. A temporary increase in unemployment, for example, might be caused by a sudden, disruptive change in production technology, or in trade patterns, or in labor or tax laws; or it could be caused by natural [...]

1Jul2007 | Howard Baetjer Jr. | 0 comments | Continued

The Great Contraction, 1929-33

The recession that began in mid-1929 need not have become a disaster. Many downturns had occurred previously in U.S. economic history, and nearly all of them had been fairly shallow and soon followed by recovery and continued growth. In the nineteenth century most people had believed that the government neither knew how nor possessed the [...]

1Apr2007 | Robert Higgs | 0 comments | Continued

The Government Is the Stabilizer?

Stability is the perennial issue in macroeconomics. The economist’s judgment about the stability of the market economy stems from what Joseph Schumpeter called the “pre-analytic vision.” To illustrate the point, Schumpeter specifically used John Maynard Keynes and his pre-analytic vision: Markets are inherently unstable; the government is the stabilizer. This belief, or vision, was held [...]

1Jan2000 | Roger W. Garrison | 0 comments | Continued