Andrew Wilson lists "five interrelated and durable myths about the 1929-39 Depression":
- Herbert Hoover, elected president in 1928, was a doctrinaire, laissez-faire, look-the-other way Republican who clung to the idea that markets were basically self-correcting.
- The stock market crash in October 1929 precipitated the Great Depression.
- Where the market had failed, the government stepped in to protect ordinary people.
- Greed caused the stock market to overshoot and then crash.
- Enlightened government pulled the nation out of the worst downturn in its history and came to the rescue of capitalism through rigorous regulation and government oversight.
