Jim Grant on the empirical case for a lassiez faire response to recessions

The case for better, more robust expansions (followed, of necessity, by lustier, more dynamic contractions) is based on the conviction that failure is an integral part of the capitalist cycle.  The argument is advanced in this chapter without the aid of an econometric model.  Instead, the principal exhibits are historical: America and Japan in both the early 1920s and the early 1990s.  In each era, inflation of one kind or another demanded a public-policy response.  The most successful policy was that of the United States in the early 1920s: a short, sharp depression.  The least successful policy was that of Japan in the early and mid-1990s: a chronic, lingering recession.

~ Jim Grant, The Trouble With Prosperity, p. 117