Efforts to pin the blame for our economic troubles on the free market abound and Professor Thomas DiLorenzo writes here about a recent Wall Street Journal piece by John Steele Gordon. The anti-market line is that the free market is at best a necessary evil that needs constant government tampering and fixing, especially when it comes to our monetary system. Gordon tries to put the Hamiltonian vision of a powerful, benevolent central bank on a pedestal and to depict Jeffersonians who wanted no such institution as clueless bumpkins.
DiLorenzo shows that central banking has been behind our periodic economic crises going back to 1819.
DiLorenzo’s new book Hamilton’s Curse is well worth reading. We’re suffering badly from that curse, namely that we need to have a powerful central government that intervenes constantly in the world of commerce for “the national good.”
