Time for a history lesson, Bossman.
After the stock market crash in 1929, Hoover brought together a summit of business leaders to ask them to keep up business as usual to support the economy. It wasn't intervention in the markets, it wasn't similar to anything that's happened in the present day, and it didn't work.
Then, somewhere around the middle of 1930, he signed the disastrous Smoot Hawley tariffs into law. This was an intervention into markets, the exact wrong kind of intervention, but again, it wasn't similar to anything that's been done in the present day.
Next, in 1931, Hoover began a war on the short sellers in the market. This was similar to the short seller bans that Chris Cox enacted over at the SEC this year. Now admittedly, this was a bad interventionist policy back then and it was a bad policy this year too, but that's what you get when you put a right-wing hack Congressman in charge of the SEC as a political favor!
It wasn't until mid-1932, 3 years into the Depression, with unemployment around 20% and GNP down about 20%, that Hoover enacted any policy that resembled the bailouts and interventionist policies that we have seen this year, and even then, Hoover's Reconstruction Finance Corporation was given inadequate authority and resources to do any good.
Hoover was a good man, but unfortunately he made all the wrong choices when he got into the uncharted waters of an economic crisis. Fortunately, we had an expert on the Depression, Ben Bernanke, in a position of authority when this crisis hit. So Hoover's errors of omission were not repeated. Instead of another Great Depression, we will likely just have a sharp recession.
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