L7: Great Depression

Many people believe that the Great Depression was a failure of the free market and was resolved by government intervention. I believe that this is a myth because government intervention is what caused the Great Depression and intervention only made it worse.
Herbert Hoover was president when we fell into the great depression. He is often viewed as the "hands-off" president that just let the market crash and refused to do anything about it. However, Hoover was very involved in the economy. He was a long-standing critic of free markets and small government. As soon as he was elected, his administration began expanding spending, taxes and regulation. He increased taxes on every bracket, taxes on the wealthy were increased from 25% to 63% and taxes on the poor were tripled. He initiated tariffs, known as protectionism, such as the Smoot-Hawley Act. His regulation in industrial, agriculture and labor fields combined with the intervention of the Fed caused the Great Depression.
Once the market crashed, government intervention only made things worse. Hoover significantly expanded the role of government in an effort to end the depression, but had no positive results. He doubled government spending during his term. What likely would have been a short but deep dip in the economy, turned into the great depression. FDR continued many of Hoover's policies and initiated the New Deal. These policies were ineffective and the economy continued to be in shambles until around the time of the onset of WW2. One belief is that WW2 brought us out of the Great Depression because so many people got jobs and it helped the economy recover.
Government intervention caused the Great Depression and government intervention worsened and extended it.