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  • Economic Report of the President, February 2008
    Essential Documents
    February 2008

  • Tibetan Monks May Hold Clue to Dollar's Future
    By Amity Shlaes, Senior Fellow for Economic History
    Op-Ed
    April 9, 2008

  • A 'Teachable' John McCain Is One Laughable Idea
    By Amity Shlaes, Senior Fellow for Economic History
    Op-Ed
    February 7, 2008

  • Bernanke Battles Wrong Ghost in Deflation Specter
    By Amity Shlaes, Senior Fellow for Economic History
    Op-Ed
    January 23, 2008

  • Stop Bush, Democrats Before They Save our Economy
    By Amity Shlaes, Senior Fellow for Economic History
    Op-Ed
    January 16, 2008

  See Also

  United States, Economics, Presidency

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  Herbert Hoover's Ghost Haunts Markets, Democrats

  Author:	Amity Shlaes, Senior Fellow for Economic History

  March 19, 2008
  Bloomberg.com

  No question, Bear Stearns Cos. evokes the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed it. Politicians are already making analogies to Herbert Hoover, the demon of that period, and Franklin Roosevelt, the angel.

  On March 16, Senator Charles Schumer of New York said on television: “We’re in the most serious economic problem we’ve been in a very long time—much worse than 2001. The president’s hands-off attitude is reminiscent of Herbert Hoover in 1929 and 1930.”

  Within 24 hours, Representative Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois Democrat, was weighing in with his own 1930s comparison. Roosevelt had pulled a country out of Depression and united it; President George W. Bush was doing the opposite, he said.

  You get the picture: Bush is like Hoover, the do-nothing. Democrats are like Roosevelt, the activist.

  It’s worthwhile to go back to that Depression period to see what people actually did or didn’t do and who resembles whom. The reality differs from the cartoon.

  Come October 1929, and the first big drops in the Dow, President Hoover pleaded for market confidence. “We are undoubtedly in a plane of prosperity, and we wish to hang on to prosperity,” he told the New York Times.

  On March 14, Bush made a similar pitch before the Economic Club of New York: “We’re a resilient economy, and I believe that the ingenuity and resolve of the American people is what helps us deal with these issues.” So far, so Hoover-ish.

  Housing Bailout Anyone?

  View full text of article

• 

  New CFR Books

  

  In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.

  

  In Regional Monetary Integration, Peter B. Kenen poses an important question: Should various country groups follow the lead of the European Monetary Union and form similar full-fledged monetary unions?

  

  Walter Russell Mead recounts the story of the centuries-long rivalry between the English- speaking peoples and their enemies in God and Gold.

  Complete list of CFR Books.

  

  

  New from the Council: Policy Options Papers

  Kenya

  In this POP, Adjunct Fellow Michelle D. Gavin suggests steps the Bush administration could take to promote political and ethnic reconciliation and to restore the viability of Kenya’s governing institutions.

  Pakistan

  In this paper, Senior Fellow Daniel Markey poses a set of recommendations for the United States to consider in response to Pakistan’s ongoing political crisis.

  

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