Hayek
Classic free market economist, found by Frankie:
"Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the
maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three
years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that
readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has
been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to
the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy
of credit expansion. . . .
"To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to
attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about;
because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we
want to create further misdirection--a procedure that can only lead
to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes
to an end. . . .
"It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to
prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the
exceptional severity and duration of the depression. We must not
forget that, for the last six or eight years, monetary policy all over
the world has followed the advice of the stabilizers. It is high time
that their influence, which has already done harm enough, should be
overthrown." (from the introduction to Monetary Nationalism and
International Stability)
Friedrich von Hayek in 1932:
"Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the
maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three
years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that
readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has
been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to
the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy
of credit expansion. . . .
"To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to
attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about;
because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we
want to create further misdirection--a procedure that can only lead
to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes
to an end. . . .
"It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to
prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the
exceptional severity and duration of the depression. We must not
forget that, for the last six or eight years, monetary policy all over
the world has followed the advice of the stabilizers. It is high time
that their influence, which has already done harm enough, should be
overthrown." (from the introduction to Monetary Nationalism and
International Stability)
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