U.S. to experience economic collapse similar to Argentina?
9 September 2009 by Christopher SuleskeEconomists Charles Rowley of George Mason University (my alma mater) and Nathanael Smith of the Locke Institute have written a piece entitled “Adam Smith would not be optimistic in today’s economic world“. Edmund Conway summarizes it thusly:
Although the authors support the Federal Reserve’s moves to slash interest rates to just above zero and embark on quantitative easing, pumping cash directly into the system, they warn that greater intervention could set the US back further. Rowley says: “It is also not impossible that the US will experience the kind of economic collapse from first to Third World status experienced by Argentina under the national-socialist governance of Juan Peron.”
The paper, which recommends that the US return to a more laissez-faire economic system rather than intervening further in activity, has been endorsed by Nobel laureate James Buchanan, who said: “We have learned some things from comparable experiences of the 1930s’ Great Depression, perhaps enough to reduce the severity of the current contraction. But we have made no progress toward putting limits on political leaders, who act out their natural proclivities without any basic understanding of what makes capitalism work.”