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Government's Caused The
Great Depression
by Glenn Woiceshyn
Published in the Globe and Mail (pg. B2) on Oct/19/1995.
Dear Editor,
Re: "Harris's Big Lie About Labour"--by Gordon Wilson--Oct/17/95--The Globe
and Mail
In defending the Ontario NDP government's labour reforms, Gordon Wilson deploys
the standard leftist gimmick of evading basic economic principles in favour of carefully
selected, so-called facts that allegedly support state intervention in the economy.
What Mr. Wilson and his ilk never do is explain how, in principle, the destruction
of competitive, free-market forces in the labour market via coercive union legislation
could possibly lead to anything but economic decline.
As for Mr. Wilson's attempt to blame the "Dirty Thirties" (and recessions)
on free enterprise, I refer him to an article written by U.S. Federal Reserve chairman
Alan Greenspan entitled "Gold and Economic Freedom." (Published in 1967,
as an essay in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand.) Mr. Greenspan explains
that it was the unbridled credit expansion by the Fed in the 1920s that created the
1930s depression. In essence, the Fed flooded the economy with paper money thus creating
an artificial boom. In order to prevent hyperinflation, it retracted credit causing
a bust in the stock market, followed by a depression.
In the same manner, our governments create regular boom-and-bust cycles by expanding
the money supply to win an election, and then contracting the money supply again
to avoid hyperinflation -- thus necessitating a recession. Meanwhile, the leftists
continue to shake their fists at capitalism for the ills caused by their own beloved
statism.
Sincerely,
Glenn Woiceshyn
© 1997 Glenn Woiceshyn. All rights reserved.
This article can be found on-line at at http://www.capitalism.org/glennw. |
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