Another letter written by Don Boudreaux (to the Washington Times):
Dear Editor:
Your equating George W. Bush with FDR is spot-on (“Franklin Delano Bush,”
October 20). Both presidents recklessly increased government’s role in the
economy – a move that proved (in FDR’s case) and will prove (in Bush’s case) to
do nothing but saturate the economy with such uncertainty as to frighten away
entrepreneurs and investors.
But popular history will almost surely remember Bush, not as a second FDR, but
as a second Herbert Hoover. The myth will be made that Bush was a staunch
free-marketeer who was succeeded in the Oval Office by a charismatic saint whose
hyperactive interventions saved the economy (even though precious little
evidence of economic salvation will appear in the data). History will forget
Bush’s interventions just as it has forgotten Hoover’s – as it has forgotten
that Hoover signed the largest tariff hike in U.S. history; as it has forgotten
that Hoover tried to create jobs by deporting hundreds of thousands of Mexicans;
as it has forgotten that Hoover signed the Emergency Relief and Construction
Act, the Federal Home Loan Bank Act, and created the Reconstruction Finance
Corporation; as it has forgotten the Fed’s panicked response to economic anxiety
during Hoover’s term.
History will repeat itself, blaming capitalism for a problem caused and
intensified by government interventions.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
