The latest U.S. News includes an interesting conversation with financial historian John Steele Gordon. In addition to countering gloom-and-doom predictions of a second Great Depression, Gordon refutes the myth that FDR?s economic interventionism saved the U.S. from the heartless laissez-faire policies of Herbert Hoover.
I realize this isn’t the Great Depression. But what do you think are the most relevant lessons from that time?
History is always written by the winners, and Hoover gets blamed for the depression while the Democrats get credit for ending it. But Hoover did more to try to help the economy than any other president up till that time. Before then, the attitude was generally, let the market take care of it. Hoover signed the Federal Home Loan Bank Act of 1931 and tried a lot of other things.
Of course he also signed the Smoot-Hawley Act. Hoover promised struggling Midwestern farmers protection from foreign competition, and then everybody got that kind of protection. And that was a disaster.
I can think of some pundits (cough, cough, Jonathan Alter, cough, cough) who could benefit from learning more about the real history of the Great Depression.
