The Obama Depression: Lessons Learned–Deja Vu!

Posted on November 15, 2009. Filed under: Blogroll, Books, Communications, Economics, Employment, Fiscal Policy, government spending, history, Immigration, Investments, Language, Law, liberty, Life, Links, Monetary Policy, People, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Quotations, Rants, Raves, Regulations, Resources, Technology, Video, Wisdom | Tags: Austrian Business Cycle Theory, Barack Obama, Economics, Friedrich A. Hayek, Herbert Hoover, John Maynard Keynes, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Obama, President Obama, Progressive Radical Socialists |

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

~George Santayana

“…CONCLUSION:THE LESSONS OF MR. OBAMA’S RECORD

Mr. Obama met the challenge of the Obama Depression by acting quickly and decisively, indeed almost continuously throughout his term of office, putting into effect “the greatest program of offense and defense” against depression ever attempted in America. Bravely he used every modern economic “tool,” every device of progressive and “enlightened” economics, every facet of government planning, to combat the depression. For the first time, laissez-faire was boldly thrown overboard and every government weapon thrown into the breach. America had awakened, and was now ready to use the State to the hilt, unhampered by the supposed shibboleths of laissez-faire. President Obama was a bold and audacious leader in this awakening. By every “progressive” tenet of our day he should have ended his term a conquering hero; instead he left America in utter and complete ruin: a ruin unprecedented in length and intensity.

What was the trouble? Economic theory demonstrates that only governmental inflation can generate a boom-and-bust cycle, and that the depression will be prolonged and aggravated by inflationist and other interventionary measures. In contrast to the myth of laissez-faire, we have shown in this book how government intervention generated the unsound boom of 2002-2007, and how Obama’s new departure aggravated the Obama Depression by massive measures of interference. The guilt for the Obama Depression must, at long last, be lifted from the shoulders of the free market economy, and placed where it properly belongs at the doors of politicians, bureaucrats, and the mass of “enlightened” economists. And in any other depression, past or future, the story will be same.”

~Murray Rothbard, America’s Obama Depression

President Obama’s economic policies repeat those of President Herbert Hoover, who the late economist Murray Rothbard was writing about. Just replace Obama with Hoover, Obama Depression with Great Depression, and 2002 to 2007 with 1920’s and you have the original quote. I am sure Murray would be laughing.

Herbert_Hoover

“The wavelike movement effecting the economic system, the recurrence of periods of boom which are followed by periods of depression is the unavoidable outcome of the attempts, repeated again and again, to lower the gross market rate of interest by means of credit expansion.”