The Return of Depression Economics [antikvár]

Introduction st economiste, to the extent that they think about the subject at ali, regard the Great Depression of the 1930s as a gratuitous, unnécessary tragedy. If only Herbert Hoover hadn't tried to balance the budget in the face of an economie slump; if only the Federai Reserve hadn't defended the gold standard at the expense of the domestic economy; if only officiate had rushed cash to threatened banks, and thus calmed the bank panie that developed in 1930-31; then the stock market crash of 1929 would have led only to a garden-variety reces-sion, soon forgotten. And since economiste and polieymakers have learned their lesson—no modem treasury secretary would echo Andrew Mellon's famous advice to "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate purge the rottenness out of the system"—nothing like the Great Depression can ever happen again. Or can it? Over the course of the last two years seven econo-mies—economies that stili produce about a quarter of the world's output and that are home to two-thirds of a billion peo- vi i