Tag Archives

Archive of posts published in the tag: Great Depression

Economic Hypochondriacs

“In Liberty alone do the economic cells have the motivation and stimulation to action; repression kills them. And we should distinguish between economic wounds and economic disease. And above all we must beware of economic hypochondriacs.”

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Growth Elements are Now in Place

Deficits do matter, but like the stimulus it also matters how they are spent.  Stimulating demand is less effective than stimulating investment.  Demand stimulus is only effective briefly under certain conditions. Stimulating investment pays dividends (pun intended) much longer.

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Economics, Science and History

Economics is a bit different from history by the use and study of certain underlying principles. It is  not a physical science but a  social science using scientific methods to analyze and understand. There are certain principles that are quite

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The Canadian Lesson on Sound Banking

The default belief  of our economic history of the last 100 years has been an acceptance of the dynamic growth of capitalism punctuated by excesses of market greed that have to be corrected by the singular wisdom of government regulation.

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Public and Private Reality

When our economy hit the wall in the last quarter of 2008 we, like so many businesses, reacted normally; we reduced the number of payroll employees and hours as much as possible,  eliminated some of the days we used the

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Why Government Debt is More Dangerous than Private Debt

What is certainly clear is that again and again, countries, banks, individuals, and firms take on excessive debt in good times without enough awareness of the risks that will follow when the inevitable recession hits. Many players in the global

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A Tale of Two Market Crashes

From Thomas Sowell’s Intellectuals and Society “In short, many things that the Federal Reserve, Congress and the two Presidents did (during the market crash of 1929) were counterproductive.  Given these multiple failures of government policy, it is by no means

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The New Normal

We tend to look at our economy as a diversion from the norm after a record financial set back.  But the economy we are in may well be closer to the norm. The former economy was distorted by government policies

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What Did Not Cause the Financial Collapse

With the clarity of time we can look back at the brink of the collapse that hit us just prior to the last national election.  In the midst of the collapse we were stunned and angry, and tended to blame

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The Four Elements of a Free Market

“Could free markets have sorted out the mess without extraordinary government action? Yes, but only by destroying the remains of the financial system and possibly putting tens of millions of people out of work. Despite virulent public opposition to the

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Hidden Inflation

We tend to look at the increase in prices as inflation, but in a situation of fluctuations prices go up and down. What if prices should be going down 3% but instead we see prices increasing 3%.  We see a

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