[Erasmus]

"Virtually nobody foresaw the Great Depression of the 1930s, or the crises which affected Japan and south-east Asia in the early and late 1990s. In fact, each downturn was preceded by a period of non-inflationary growth exuberant enough to lead many commentators to suggest that a 'new era' had arrived," it said.

Some folks at the B.I.S., and for that matter, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, sound like Austrians here.

[NVDave]

Well, one of the reasons why no one foresaw the Great Depression was that the Depression wasn’t caused by the stock market crash of ‘29. That kicked off a liquidity crisis and precipitated a great number of very stupid actions on the part of FDR, the Congress and the Fed.

The economy can survive stupidity by any one of those three; at worst, we’ll have a recession as a result.

But all three acting in concert at the same time? No economy is strong enough to survive a hat trick of stupidity.