Compassionate Conservatism Redux

clipped from www.aim.org In The Politically Incorrect Guide To The Great Depression And The New Deal, economist Robert P. Murphy, Ph. D., gives us a very useful comparison of what happened in another recession that occurred in the 1920s when so-called laissez-faire economics was practiced and the more famous economic collapse when it wasn't. "The annual unemployment rate peaked at 11.7 percent in 1921, but it had fallen to 6.7 percent by the following year, and was down to an incredible 2.4 percent by 1923," Murphy writes. "That is how a market with flexible wages and prices quickly corrects itself after a Fed-induced inflationary boom." "But because the 'compassionate' Hoover forbade businesses from cutting wages after the 1929 crash, unemployment went up and up and up, hitting the unimaginable peak of 28.33 percent in March 1933." "Compassionate conservatism," then, is not a terribly new deal either.