Silent Cal

Came across a couple of quotations from Calvin Coolidge in a book I was reading earlier today. No, I’m not reading a book about Calvin Coolidge (although the connoisseur of all things Hopper wouldn’t put it past me), but a book about the economics of the Great Depression. No agenda behind this; the book just caught my attention browsing in the library this morning.

Consider:

“If business can be let alone and assured of reasonable freedom from governmental interference and increased taxes, that will do more than all kinds of legislation to relieve depression. Local governments are justified in spending all the money necessary for the direct relief of distress. But the nation and the states will only increase the difficulties by undertaking to restore confidence through legislation. It will be the part of wisdom to give business a free hand to supply its own remedies.”

And:

“When depression in business comes we begin to be very conservative in our financial affairs. We save our money and take no chances in its investment. Yet in our political actions we go in the opposite direction. We begin to support radical measures and cast our votes for those who advance the most reckless proposals … This is a curious and illogical reaction. When times are good we might take a chance on a radical government. But when we are financially weakened we need the soundest and wisest of men and measures.”

Two points:

1) Can someone please forward this man’s memoirs to Barack Obama?

2) How eerily appropriate are these words to today’s economic situation, some ninety-odd years later.

And a third:

3) Oh, yeah. Right, forgot. It’s not about economics. It’s about power.

[Quotations taken from Silent Cal’s Almanack: The Homespun Wit and Wisdom of Vermont’s Calvin Coolidge.]