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My friend and co-blogger at Market Correction [2], 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 [3]). 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