Depression? Let’s Destroy Property!

After 1929, Herbert Hoover, the Republican who pioneered the New Deal (see Rothbard), famously had farmers plow under every other row and kill productive farm animals, in an attempt to keep food prices from falling. Can’t have that! FDR continued the same crazed policies. We didn’t begin to recover until 1946. The return to economic and social reality that is a recession or depression must be allowed to proceed unimpeded for recovery. Meanwhile, the lower prices benefit the poorest and most vulnerable in society, and indeed most of us. Herbert Bush is following the same strategy when it comes to housing–try to stop prices from falling with bailouts, subsidies, and other damaging interventions. It doesn’t work in the long term, though it can do great damage by delaying the clearing of the market. There were too many houses built during the Fed’s boom, and their prices soared artificially. It is necessary and appropriate that prices fall – probably by 50% and more in some areas. So now, writes Robert Blumen, “the idiot Bill Gross says we should blow up homes to ensure that the prices of other homes don’t fall!”

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8:25 am on July 29, 2008