Vocal Point-Lawrence Reed

Topic: the Great Depression (and Our Fiscal Crisis)

Right now, because of the response to the coronavirus, we are undergoing a financial meltdown. Unemployment this Spring of 2020 is at levels not seen since the Great Depression. One of the myths of the Great Depression is that it was solved through FDR’s New Deal. Economist Lawrence Reed of the Foundation for Economic Education disagrees with that notion. He wrote this article showing that the political remedies of the 1930s only prolonged the misery. His conclusion states: “The genesis of the Great Depression lay in the inflationary monetary policies of the U.S. government in the 1920s. It was prolonged and exacerbated by a litany of political missteps: trade-crushing tariffs, incentive-sapping taxes, mind-numbing controls on production and competition, senseless destruction of crops and cattle, and coercive labor laws, to recount just a few. It was not the free market that produced twelve years of agony; rather, it was political bungling on a scale as grand as there ever was.” Larry Reed joins Jerry Newcombe to discuss this topic. www.fee.org