Sunday, October 25, 2009

Lessons of 1920-21

History is nothing but a long list of disasters in chronological order. Historians love calamity...

Harding was the last American president to deal honestly with a major financial crisis. Every president since has tried to scam his way out of it.

By the time Harding took office in ’21 the Panic of 1920 was taking the unemployment rate from 4% to nearly 12%. GDP fell 17%. Then, as now, the president’s subordinates urged him to intervene. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover wanted to meddle – as he would 10 years later. But Harding resisted. No bailouts. No stimulus. No monetary policy. No fiscal policy. Harding had a better approach; he cut government spending and went out to play poker...

“No statute enacted by man can repeal the inexorable laws of nature,” he announced. “Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government…”

Harding was not the first to see the economy as a ‘natural’ order…one that you disturbed at your peril. A Taoist named Zhuangzi, who lived about the same time as Alexander, observed: “Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone.”...

Keynes came along a few years later. Keynes was a genius; everybody said so. And he had an answer for everything. Nature? Government could do better. Debt? Don’t worry about it, he said. Why not just let capitalism sort itself out? Without government intervention, it will only get worse, said Keynes.

But Harding had already proved him wrong. Harding did the very opposite of what Keynes recommended. Instead of increasing government spending, he reduced it. He cut the budget almost in half. He slashed taxes too…and cut the national debt by a third...

This lesson was entirely lost on the world’s economists. When the next crisis hit a decade later, they turned to Keynes. Of course, it turned out to be a moral world after all. They got what they deserved.

read the entire essay

No comments: