In his book, The Forgotten Depression, economic writer James Grant, editor of the prestigious Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, gives us the history of the depression of 1920-21.

It was a very deep depression, as deep as the one that succeeded in 1929. But in this case, the government did not intervene, and it was over in less than two years. Was this a coincidence? Grant does not think it was. He believes, as this writer does, that present government interventions have deepened our current economic malaise and are retarding a full recovery.

Economic orthodoxy, which is eagerly embraced by virtually all governments today, says that the remedy for economic slumps is for government to print more money, enable more debt, and directly spend more money. This is right out of the playbook of British economist John Maynard Keynes, who died 69 years ago.

The curious thing about Keynes’s ideas is that there is nothing even remotely scientific about them. There isn’t even logic or fact to support them.

One of Keynes’s assertions was that a slump without government intervention would just keep getting worse and worse. Yet a brilliant Keynesian disciple, Franco Modigliani, refuted that idea even before the master’s death in 1946.