DIGG THIS Dear Professor Becker: I was pleasantly surprised to see you seriously entertain the notion that "depressions" — for younger readers, the term economists used to use for what we now call "recessions" — might serve a socially useful function. This is a crucial issue, as the government has already committed more than one trillion dollars, and assumed incredible powers, in an attempt to skirt the current slump. Virtually every financial commentator takes it for granted that boom periods are good while recessions are bad, and that government policies ought to foster booms while minimizing recessionary periods. The Austrian … Continue reading Depressions Are Curative