Sunday, September 06, 2009

No Basic Understanding

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk


Barack Obama is committing the same mistakes made by policymakers during the
Great Depression, according to a new study endorsed by Nobel laureate James
Buchanan.

His policies even have the potential to consign the US to a similar fate as
Argentina, which suffered a painful and humiliating slide from first to
Third World status last century, the paper says.


There are "troubling similarities" between the US President's
actions since taking office and those which in the 1930s sent the US and
much of the world spiralling into the worst economic collapse in recorded
history

James Buchanan, who said: "We have learned
some things from comparable experiences of the 1930s' Great Depression,
perhaps enough to reduce the severity of the current contraction. But we
have made no progress toward putting limits on political leaders, who act
out their natural proclivities without any basic understanding of what makes
capitalism work."