Great Depression

Heartland Senior Fellow Peter Ferrara joins the Made In America radio show with host Neal Asbury to talk about a new Heartland policy brief titled “Why the United States Has Suffered the Worst Economic Recovery Since the Great Depression.”

Sometimes there are men of principle who live their values and not merely speak or write about them. People who stand up to political evil at their own risk, and then go on to say and do things that help to remake their country in the aftermath of war and destruction. One such individual was the German, free-market economist, Wilhelm Röpke.

On Wednesday, Georgetown Law School Professor Randy Barnett started with a lecture on the two traditional visions of the Constitution. Proponents of the well-known democratic Constitution contend rights are derived…

Democratic Party strategist Robert Weiner claims inexpensive domestic oil production via hydraulic fracturing will cause a new Great Depression, yet exactly the opposite is true. Writing in the Lynchburg, Virginia-based News & Advance, Weiner and his colleague Hannah Coombs strangely argue that Americans taking advantage of abundant, affordable energy resources is bad for the economy and will destroy our standard of living. In reality, Weiner and Coombs provide a perfect illustration about how anti-science, anti-fossil fuel hysteria drives leftist crusades against global warming, domestic oil production, and other asserted environmental causes.

For more than a decade, now, Federal Reserve policy has been guided by the fear of one economic bogyman: the presumed danger of “price deflation.” The fear is unfounded and the inflationary “solution” only leads to disaster.

Forty years ago, during the week of June 15-22, 1974, the Austrian School of Economics was reborn during a conference in the small New England town of South Royalton, Vermont. Why was this important? Because the economists of the Austrian School have developed the most persuasive understanding of why only economic freedom can give mankind both liberty and prosperity.

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) is out with news of higher transit ridership. APTA President and CEO Michael Melaniphy characterizes the new figures as indicating “a fundamental shift going on in the way we move about our communities.” Others even characterized the results as indicating “shifting consumer preferences.” The data shows either view to be an exaggeration.

President Obama paints pretty pictures with flowery pro-growth and populist rhetoric. But the results are consistently the opposite of his promises.

At the end of 2013, after serving five years, Barack Obama is a complete failure as President, by his own standards, as reflected in his own words.

Earlier this month, President Obama tried to change the subject from Obamacare by pitching some rhetoric on “equality” to rally his Far Left base. Not much thoughtful or helpful is…

One hundred years ago this month, on December 23, 1913, the Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, establishing a national central-banking system in the United States. The governing board of the Federal Reserve was organized on August 12, 1914, and the Federal Reserve banks opened for operation on November 16, 1914.

A common fallacy is that the Great Depression was ended by the explosive spending of World War II. But World War II actually institutionalized the sharp decline in the standard of living caused by the Depression.

Ninety years ago, on November 15, 1923, the Great German Inflation came to an end when the monetary printing presses were finally shut down, and the economic havoc came to an end. Its lessons are worth remembering.