Walter E. Williams: What really caused the Great Depression

"Professor Hanke says that the lesson to be drawn from business cycle history is that, if left to run their natural course, severe downturns are followed by rapid snapbacks. The 1921 recession is a good example where wholesale prices, industrial production and manufacturing employment fell by 30 percent or more and reached their low in mid-1921. There was little government intervention, at least by today's standards, and the economy recovered naturally; and by early 1922, it had fully recovered and the nation was off to the Roaring Twenties.

"The bottom line is that the idea that government bureaucrats have enough knowledge to manage an economy well is the height of conceit – what Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek called the 'fatal conceit.'"