Hans Bader points out that our ostensibly scholarly president keeps repeating the myth that the Great Depression was due to Herbert Hoover’s policies of cutting taxes for the rich and slashing government spending. Both ideas are demonstrably false. Hoover was a big-government advocate who increased taxes and spending, just as George Bush and Obama have done — and of course with similar results. Increasing the federal government’s interference with the natural order of market competition always slows production and wastes resources.