N More Years!

Four-score years ago our forefathers overwhelmingly elected Herbert Hoover to serve as President of the United States. He was inaugurated March 4, 1929, just in time to take the rap for not preventing the Wall Street crash of October 29, 1929, which according to the conventional wisdom, triggered the Great Depression. Of course, it was a bum rap; under then current law, the President was essentially powerless to affect what did or did not happen on Wall Street. But the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was pending before Congress in late 1929 and was signed into law by Hoover in early 1930. Other scribes (most notably the late Jude Wanniski) have concluded that Congressional Act – whose protective tariffs not only could, but did, affect what happened on Wall Street and Main Street – was the real "cause" of the Great Depression. So what... [read full story]