Bring Back The Dodo Birds

clipped from mises.org It is the unusual that grabs the attention, and the ideas and beliefs of the majority of our ancestors on how best to clean up the mess of 1819 are vastly different from almost everything I see and hear today. From CNBC's cute little money honeys to newspaper op-eds to my coworkers on the trade desk, all cry that the government must do something. Many of the elite from 1819 believed the exact opposite — that government must do nothing. The newspaper editors of 1819 in particular led the fight against continued government intervention in the market and, most surprising to a denizen of 2009 America, many politicians at both the state and federal level joined them. Dodo birds of a political kind once roamed our nation's capitals. In 1819 America, nobody blamed the effects for the Panic of 1819, they rightly blamed the cause; they blamed (in Caroline Baum's words) the "friendly central bank." As Professor John Dobson points out, "the [central] bank's policies fueled inflation