The Politically Incorrect Guide to The Great Depression and the New Deal:

Posted by ObjectiveAnalyst 11 years, 8 months ago to Books
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The Politically Incorrect Guide to The Great Depression and the New Deal:
Written by, Robert P. Murphy, Ph.D. (ISBN 978-1-59698-096-9)

This relatively short read is quite compelling. With the benefit of additional data, more history, context and hindsight, its arguments regarding economic cycles, detrimental repercussions of progressive social engineering, monetary policies, banking and regulating policies are made plain for the armchair economist.
Pro gold standard and free market economics; it is agreeable with Austrian economics and recognizes the “Austrian business cycle theory”. While generally agreeing with Friedman it argues contrary to a few of the monetarist’s analyses, but not whom the blame for extending the financial hardship is deserved and what finally helped alleviate it. Von Mises and Hayek were right. Hayek was on of the few that predicted the Crash in 29.
The comparison of Hoover, FDR and Bush, Obama policy parallels, laying blame on each as deserved, portend extended economic difficulties for us. The case is well made that FDR’s policies only exacerbated the depression and created a less stable economy, just as Obama’s are now.
Respectfully,
O.A.


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  • Posted by 11 years, 8 months ago
    Contributors,

    Thanks to all of you for your contributions. All so far are excellent comments. I have read more detailed works of this era, some you have mentioned, which are also referenced in this book; but what I found appealing to this book was its brevity. This, 177 page book pulls together the most significant factors/ events, makes it easy for the layman economist, casual reader. For me it was a lot of review, with a couple of twists, but I was impressed with the way it pulled them all together.
    Regards,
    O.A.
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  • Posted by Lucky 11 years, 8 months ago
    For those who want more detail:

    Henry Hazlitt.
    Economics in One Lesson.
    The Foundation for Economic Education.
    February 1948 (!)
    Not too difficult but it is 198pp

    Murray N Rothbard
    America's Great Depression
    Mises Institute. copyright 2000
    409pp

    Both can be downloaded as PDF.
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  • Posted by Ben_C 11 years, 8 months ago
    My dad was a child of the great depression and agrees 100% with your last sentence. It was WWII that pulled us out of the depression, not our government's economic policies.
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