"Crisis" = Excuse

I haven't been following politics long enough to have seen a "crisis" while under a Democratic administration. I've just assumed that Republicans would be the first to call a crisis right now if Kerry had been elected in 2004, even if it weren't necessarily true. I truly don't believe we're in a crisis now, though I admit things could be worse.

Anyway, in a post at Cato about the effects of trade on GDP, Daniel Griswold makes an interesting observation (that I, obviously, have never heard before):

Politicians love a full-blown crisis because it can be used to justify all sortsof regulatory and spending programs.

So if you're skeptical of business, you're probably looking for a reason to regulate them. All you need is to call a crisis so you have an excuse to regulate. Truthfully, though, conservatives have kind of gotten their own "crisis" with oil prices as an "excuse" to drill for more oil. Funny how that works out. The difference to me is that liberals see a crisis as a chance to regulate while conservatives see it as a chance to deregulate.