Transcribed by Jeff Fenske from: Tom Woods and Burton Folsom on Glenn Beck “Meltdown” 02/09/2009

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXxNRNOjCM8]

Thomas Woods:

“There’s the case of the Great Depression of 1920, which no one’s ever heard of, because the government at that time didn’t do anything to try to get us out of it. They did the exact opposite of what every Keynesian blockhead, today, tells us to do. …

Here you have a depression that was worse in its first year than the first year of the depression of ’29, and yet, in no time the country was back on its feet, setting production records once again. All the bad malinvestments of the preceding boom were all cleared out, and you had a robust recovery.

Whereas in 1929 and thereafter, what did you have? Tinker, tinker, tinker, year after year after year. And regardless of the fact that in the media you hear, even today, that: ‘Herbert Hoover sat back and did nothing during the Great Depression.’ If only he had! Everything he did made it worse, so that in 1932, when F.D.R. was running against him, his Vice Presidential nominee actually said: ‘Hoover is leading the country down the road to socialism.’ Everybody knew he was intervening. And so year after year after year, the depression persists. You’ve got double-digit unemployment.

Maybe there’s a lesson here. The one time the government said, in American history, ‘we’re going to roll up our sleeves and solve this thing,’ the thing would not go away. They would not allow the recovery to take place.

[…]

If we [had] let the market set interest rates, you don’t have these crazy asset bubbles.”

Glenn Beck:

“When I read things like both of your gentleman’s books…. I read the history of this country. Woodrow Wilson was a nightmare. F.D.R. not anything like what I thought he was, and what’s being taught at school. Burton, why are we not taught the truth?“

Burton Folsom:

“Historians are committed that you need to centralize power in Washington.”

The guests’ books at Amazon:

New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America, by Burton W., Jr. Folsom

Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse, by Thomas E. Woods Jr.

Related:

Tom Woods: Meltdown (Lew Rockwell Show 2/11/09)

Celente: The Greatest Depression — Using 1930’s Models to Get Us Out of This is Really Stupid”

Ron Paul on Real Time with Bill Maher 2/20/09 — “The real problem is we need to do a lot less”