Thanks to Chris Maloney for this review, by economist John Tamny, of of Tom Wood’s Meltdown. Tamny writes:
3:02 pm on July 9, 2010Well before the “Financial Crisis of 2008” there was a prominent, but largely ignored group of Austrian School economic thinkers who were warning of difficult times ahead. To some, including this writer, the economic problems of the past and present are and were the expected result of Austrian malinvestment whereby limited capital flowed into non-economic concepts that our federal masters championed.
Thomas Woods’ essential book, Meltdown, is the best yet when it comes to describing how this occurred.
It should first be stressed that this is not a partisan book. The recessionary rush to property was most certainly authored by both political parties, and neither Party escapes Woods’ brilliant critique.
At the same time, for those who’ve long suffered the often bipartisan suggestion that our problems resulted from too little government regulation, Woods happily eviscerates this absurd line of thinking. As Woods puts it, the “current crisis was caused not by the free market but by the government’s intervention in the market.”
And for those who remain skeptical, Woods reminds us that at best, the notion that more regulation would have saved us from much worse down the line misses the point. As Woods notes early on, “lenders were doing exactly what the federal government and its central bank wanted them to do.”
