Volume 14, No. 4 (Winter 2011)
The 2007–2008 financial crisis, accompanying recession, and continuing slow recovery have reinvigorated crude Keynesianism as the foundation of a “somebody in charge” policy to combat recession and high unemployment. Wapshott ”The federal government’s urgent response to the financial crisis of 2007–2008, initiated by George W. Bush and continued by Barack Obama, was thoroughly Keynesian, with both administrations intervening in the marketplace to head off the economy’s collapse.” In his view, “America faced an existential crisis, and as in the 1930s, a failure to act was considered so foolhardy it was barely contemplated.” Readers familiar with Rothbard will be aware that it was this urge to action, the State’s animal spirits that turned a “garden variety recession” into the Great Depression.
