Herbert Hoover: The Forgotten Architect of Economic Intervention

In the literature on the Great Depression, interventionists claim that it was President Herbert Hoover’s “free market” policies that contributed to and even caused the economic crash that characterized the 1930s. But, under even the least scrutiny, this pernicious myth falls apart completely.

The following article was originally published by the Mises Institute. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Peter Schiff or SchiffGold.

Herbert Hoover was a progressive activist president when it came to intervention into the economy. During this period, while free market capitalism was already increasingly hampered in the US (i.e., central banking, business regulations to the benefit of politically-connected big business, the income tax, etc.), many countries were experimenting with bold new theories of central planning (e.g., socialism, communism, fascism). Herbert Hoover—before and during his presidency—was at the forefront of this progressive-interventionist paradigm. Somehow, Hoover received an undeserved reputation as “the last stubborn guardian of laissez-faire in America.”

Murray Rothbard, in chapter 15 of The Progressive Era—“Herbert Hoover and the Myth of Laissez-Faire”—wrote about the inversion of the historical truth regarding Hoover,