The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal - Softcover

Murphy, Robert P.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1596980966 ISBN 13: 9781596980969

Publisher: Regnery, 2009

Synopsis

In this timely new P.I. Guide, Murphy reveals the stark truth: free market failure didn't cause the Great Depression and the New Deal didn't cure it. Shattering myths and politically correct lies, he tells why World War II didn t help the economy or get us out of the Great Depression; why it took FDR to make the Depression Great; and why Herbert Hoover was more like Obama and less like Bush than the liberal media would have you believe. Free-market believers and capitalists everywhere should have this on their bookshelf and in their briefcases.

About this title

About the Author

Robert P. Murphy earned his Ph.D. in economics from New York University. A former professor at Hillsdale College, he is now an adjunct scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a senior fellow in business and economic studies at the Pacific Research Institute, and an economist with both the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Institute for Energy Research. He has testified before Congress on economic issues, and has worked as both an investment/business analyst and as a journalist. He is a frequent radio guest and writes a column for Townhall.com. He lives with his wife and son in Nashville, Tennessee.

From the Back Cover

Bad times are here again...and so too are bad ideas on how to fix them.

No economic myth these days is more pernicious than the myth that the free market caused the Great Depression and the New Deal got us out of it. That, as economist Robert P. Murphy points out is flat-out false. In The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal he provides irrefutable evidence that not only did government interference with the market cause the Great Depression (and our current economic collapse), but Herbert Hoover's and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's big government policies afterwards made it much longer and much worse (just as President Barack Obama's extraordinary expansion of government promises to do today). Perhaps even more compelling, Murphy exposes the untold story behind the New Deal--how it operated by force, and why what's really at stake is not only our economy but our liberty.

Praise for The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal.

"A thorough and impressive critique of FDR and the New Deal which should be required reading in all modern U.S. history and economics courses. I highly recommend this insightful book."
--Burton W. Folsom, Jr., Professor of History, Hillsdale College and author of New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America

"Robert P. Murphy's splendid guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal is a clear, compelling account of an era that even most economists get wrong. Now that many people are clamoring for a rerun of the New Deal, you owe it to yourself to find out what such a sequel would entail. Murphy's book is the best place to begin your quest."
--Robert Higgs, Senior Fellow in Political Economy, The Independent Institute

"Today's central planners cower from the truth about the Great Depression and the New Deal like Dracula before a crucifix. Robert Murphy eviscerates the fantasy version of these episodes that is used to justify destructive and idiotic policies today. You almost feel sorry for the propagandists while reading this book. Almost."
--Thomas E. Woods, Ph.D., author of the New York Times bestseller Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse

"Dr. Murphy explains in insightful fashion why the conventional wisdom is neither conventional nor wisdom. He is not only a good economist but can turn the reader into a good economist."
--Gary Wolfram, William Simon Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Hillsdale College

"Bob Murphy's Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression provides defenders of liberty the intellectual arsenal they need to counter the myth that capitalism caused, and government cured the Great Depression. Read this book and understand why massively increasing government is not change we can believe in."
--Congressman Ron Paul

From the Inside Flap

Everything you know about the Great Depression and the New Deal is wrong

We all learned in school that the 1920s were a time of unregulated capitalism that led to the stock market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Herbert Hoover was a laissez-faire ideologue who did nothing to alleviate the crisis--even as citizens starved and were forced to live in "Hoovervilles." And the interventionist policies and massive spending programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal gradually lifted us out of the Depression, until World War II brought it to a definitive end.

The only trouble with this official narrative--taught in most history textbooks, and proclaimed as gospel by the media--is that every element of it is false. Worse, this unsubstantiated myth is now being used to justify a "new New Deal" in response to today's economic crisis that could lead to a Greater Depression even deeper and longer than the first. But in The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal, economist Robert Murphy fact-checks the myths, shows why they're wrong, and delves deep into history to set the record straight. His "politically incorrect" conclusion? It was government, not free markets, that caused the Great Depression--and the New Deal only made it worse. The real "lessons of the Great Depression" are not what you've been taught.

* The Crash of `29 was caused not by capitalism, but by the boom brought on by the newly created Federal Reserve's easy money policy (sound familiar?)
* Hoover made the Depression "Great" precisely by abandoning the laissez-faire approach that previous presidents had followed and that kept depressions short
* The bank runs of the 1930s were caused by government intervention in the banking system
* Government efforts to prop up wages and prices led to a full decade of double-digit unemployment
* FDR's arbitrary policies toward businessmen resulted in net investment of less than zero for much of the Depression

Might Barack Obama be the new FDR? You'll know, after reading The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal that if he is, that's nothing to celebrate.

Edition details

• Publisher: Regnery
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1596980966
• ISBN 13: 9781596980969
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272