“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate real estate,” Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon may or may not have told Herbert Hoover in the early years of the Great Depression. “It will purge the rottenness out of of the system.” This is what has since become known as the “Austrian” view (although most of its modern proselytizers are American): economic actors need to learn from their mistakes, “malinvestment” must be punished, busts are needed to wring out the excesses created during boom times.
via Why We Didn’t Learn Enough From the Financial Crisis – Justin Fox – Harvard Business Review.
