Tuesday, March 31, 2009

The more things change ...

This, from an uncredited 1959 New Yorker review of a book called "Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression", by Harris Gaylord Warren (and I'm sorry, but the name Gaylord will forever remind me of "Meet The Parents"):

Enough time has passed to allow us to think about the depression, that fascinating and not yet entirely comprehensible catastrophe, with some objectivity. ... [Hoover] did not cause the depression ... but he did not do much to end it, partly because he did not comprehend its magnitude. The irresponsibility, chicanery, and stupidity that helped bring it about were common on the upper levels of American finance and industry all during the twenties ... When the depression came, Hoover met it with a consistently inadequate set of principles. ... [Warren] suggests that Hoover was not a bad man but that, since he was unwilling to use the powers of the federal government to intervene decisively in an economic crisis, he was a poor President.

Well, hello, what have we here?