WSJ Documents Crisis And Leviathan, 2009

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The frontier between the state and market has shifted.  The realm of the state has been enlarged.

– Daniel Yergin, author of 1998’s The Commanding Heights which chronicled the ascent of free market forces starting in the 1980s, quoted in “After the Bailouts, Washington’s the Boss”, The Wall Street Journal, December 28, A1

At the time of economic crisis, when critical extensions of governmental power are likely to occur… there is little opportunity for a meaningful vote on whether or not, as a matter of principle, the powers of the state should be extended.  Instead, there is likely to be an insistent demand for emergency action of some sort and relatively little consideration of what the permanent effect will be.

– Calvin Hoover, The Economy, Liberty, and the State (1959), quoted in Robert Higgs, Crisis And Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (1987), Chapter 1

wsj-bailouts-timeline

Source: “After the Bailouts, Washington’s the Boss”, The Wall Street Journal, December 28, A1

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