The Panic of 1819, Murray Rothbard’s incisive and extremely well-styled Columbia University dissertation, provides a fascinating history of the era and an answer to the question of when and how the boom died. FULL ARTICLE by Mark Skousen
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/11527/the-panic-of-1819/
The Panic of 1819
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I have read the book and agree that it is fantastic!
A strong dose of skepticism against bankers is healty, in my opinion. I think that we may be seeing a resurgence of that attitude among the public. As yet, it’s hard to pick out more than a handful of public officials who do more than pander to public attitudes though.
The general impression is that Wall Street owns Washington. Until that alliance is broken (either voluntarily or when economic reality can no longer be papered over), I’m afraid that we will slip deeper into depression.
fundamentalist,
I agree with you. The book is fantastic.
A couple of things about the article not the book.
Skousen mentions James Madison’s comments objecting to a national bank, but fails to mention that Madison, when confronted with the out of control state banks signed the law that gave the 2nd Bank its charter.
Skousen acknowledges that the state banks were the source of the inflation but then seems to praise Andrew Jackson for preventing the 2nd National Bank from reining them in. Jackson even went so far as to take federal government gold from tariffs and turn it over to the state banks.
The overwhelming impression from Rothbards book is that the state banks were out of control.
Sometime in the last year – I can’t remember exactly when, but it was around the time that interest in Ron Paul’s End the Fed was at its height – there appeared to be a coordinated campaign to place the following pro-Fed “talking point” in online media (and in printed and broadcast media for all I know). It went like this:
The sudden appearance of these snappy comebacks was very similar to the “Ron Paul is a racist because of that old newsletter” zinger with which the media were flooded at the height of his popularity in the 2008 nomination campaign.
Of course the booboisie will be more than satisfied once they are fed zingers like these and can go back to contentedly voting for “change” and then watching their jobs and savings evaporate, but it is truly a great thing that for the skeptical and intelligent minority, they will sooner or later find articles like this.
http://mises.org/rothbard/panic1819.pdf
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