Perhaps the most famous characterization of American austerity thinking comes from a line attributed to Herbert Hoover’s treasury secretary Andrew Mellon in response to the crisis of the late 1920s and early 1930s: “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.” The result would be that “rottenness [will be purged] out of the system. … People will … live a more moral life … and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.” Adam Smith, it seems, was alive and well on the Potomac. Yet, despite the moral invocations, the Hoover administration did not exactly cleave to Mellon’s “liquidationist” line.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 319