Listening to Economic History for Today’s Policies

There is a relatively famous saying that goes along the lines of “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it”. While this saying can be applied to a number of different situations, it is especially relevant when talking about economic history and how to avoid the mistakes that led to massive depressions and the destruction of the national, and sometimes world, economy. History is frequently written by the winners and economic history faces the exact same problem. Frequently the creators of successful economic policies ignore anything other than what they accomplished when they explain how the economy turned around. All sides of the political spectrum fall into this trap and this makes it difficult, yet all the more important, to figure out what did and didn’t work while trying to reverse a country’s economic fortunes.

The most important thing when looking at economic history is the ability to read past all of the propaganda and see what actually worked and what actually failed. This can mean possibly ignoring your political beliefs and looking at how regulation and policies, world economics, and current events of the times all worked together to create an environment when specific actions lead to the desired outcomes. This can also mean looking through all of the partisan spin that infects our current writings on economic history and look through the ideology to see which policies actually helped and which were said to have helped but that, in reality, didn’t do all that much to change the course of history. While events and products might be different now, the past holds a wealth of information regarding how people react during times of crisis and how markets react during those times as well. History is cyclical and nothing really changes when you look closely.

If you’d like to read more, the link is here. Just remember to always look through the biases and get the actual messages.

from Edmund Scarborough’s Historical Business Site http://ift.tt/1u7eLfR

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