Morriss on Brown

My friend and co-blogger at Market Correction, Andy Morriss, sent this letter to the Financial Times:

Sirs,

You write that the European response “once again”
to the banking crisis demonstrated that “it often takes a full-blown
crisis to bring the best out” of the European Union (“Turmoil
brings out best in Europe,” Oct. 14). Historian Robert Higgs offered a
more ominous account of the impact of a crisis on government, noting that the
increases in state power that form the response to a crisis never fully recede
once the crisis is over (Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan).  If
Higgs is right, Gordon Brown’s leadership role is not ironic, as your
story suggests, but entirely predictable: Europe’s most statist leader
seized a chance to boost state power. This is no more surprising than that a
hog would gorge itself when presented with a trough of food and about as
appetizing to watch.

Andrew P. Morriss
H. Ross & Helen Workman Professor of Law and Business
University of Illinois

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