Crazy, libertarian extremists were right about the boom and bust
October 5, 2008 – 11:47 pm by JohnYes, I read a Karen De Coster post and wasn’t immediately repulsed or offended. She makes two points I’ve thought to myself recently:
The point being that “crazy, extremist” libertarians/contrarians/skeptics, who long ago pointed out the facts about statist policies propping up an unsustainable economic boom, are just crazy and extremist. But when all the things they said would happen do happen, it’s a good time for “serious, sober” people – who are not deemed crazy extremists – to weigh in and confirm the most obvious points in retrospect. Then the analysis and 11th-hour conclusions can be taken seriously. How convenient!
The Austrian economists were exactly right about the Great Depression and they were exactly right about the unsustainable housing boom. They have been railing against the Federal Reserve, its inflationary monetary policy, its lack of a gold standard, and the artificially low interest rates (and probably many other shady Wall Street practices I don’t understand yet) for years. Everything they predicted and warned against has come true, in the way they predicted it. Everything.
They were right, and their solutions are right, which makes them not crazy or extreme, but rather it makes the mainstream pundits, politicians, and economists crazy and extreme because they refuse to change course and listen to people who were right.
Does anyone ever dream, even for a moment, what it would be like if Rothbard and Mencken were alive in these years, with the power of the Internet behind them?
Yes, yes, dear god, yes! Murray Rothbard during this pathetic administration and this pathetic presidential campaign would be stuff for the ages. Mencken was a mainstream journalist back in his day. He would be relentless in his excoriations of the government, its criminal administrators, and the idiots in the rest of the MSM.
