Lew Rockwell on government's role in dealing with busts

The rap on the Austrian School of the 1930s is that they counseled a do-nothing policy on the depression. That is not true. There are many things that government can do but they all amount to doing less, which is a positive action of sorts. It must not attempt to prop up and raise wages. It must stop taxing business so heavily and raising the costs of investment. It must cut regulations that are hampering recovery. It can cut spending dramatically as a way of returning resources to the private sector where they can do some good.

What government cannot do without causing even more problems is take positive action against symptoms, such as falling stocks or housing prices, rising unemployment, business failures, and falling incomes. This is precisely what caused the Great Depression to get its name instead of being called what it might have been called: the recession of 1929–1931.

~ Lew Rockwell, "Recession or Depression?," LewRockwell.com, January 10, 2008