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by Friendo on September 4th, 2008

Friendo

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Would the Herbert Hoover Administration's laissez-faire policies have ended the Great Depression without war, if given a chance? In shorter time?

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  • by SaulOhio on November 30th, 2010

    SaulOhio

    The very question assumes that Hoover's policies were laissez-faire. His own writing show that he never believed in laissez-faire. In the early 1920's, he wrote that the solution to recessions and depressions was massive public works projects. Months before the 1929 crash, he intervened with the Agricultural Marketing Act. As soon as the crash happened, he called business leaders to Washington to straongarm them into keeping wages high when they should have fallen. He did this by a process he called "voluntarism", which is as voluntary as a mobster's methods for gaining your "cooperation". He either threatened them with pro-union legislation, or promised to protect them from unions. (Laiisez-faire would mean government is a neutral judge concerning unions)

    ''The battle to save our economic machine in motion in this emergency takes new forms and requires new tactics from time to time. We used such emergency powers to win the war; we can use them to fight Depression.'' -- Herber Hoover.

    Even in the last week of October 1929, he attempted stimulus, usging the Fed into a quantitative easing of $300 million.

    The very question of whether Hoover's laissez-faire policies would have gotten us out of the Great Depression if given time is invalid, since his policies were NOT laissez-faire.

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