(Photo provided)

Brad Skiles, founder of Center Street Partners, recently completed the 6-week course, “The Interwar Years” (the period between World War I and World War II). The Internet course was taught by Hunt Tooley, Ph.D., who is the chair of History at Austin College in Sherman, Texas. Forty-five students took the class with nine foreign countries being represented.

“The significance of this class,” said Skiles, “is that we can trace the United States’ abandonment of capitalism to President Hoover’s response to the Great Depression. The New Deal really began with Hoover and was accelerated with President Roosevelt’s social programs. Although Roosevelt gets credit for the New Deal, Hoover began the government’s intervention into the economy.” Skiles says that since this time, America has been defined as a “mixed economy,” a combination of capitalism and socialism.

This is the seventh class Skiles has taken from the Mises Academy. These Internet classes offer teaching from some of the nation’s top economists and historians. More information can be found at www.mises.org.

To complete this course Brad wrote a paper titled, “Top 10 Interwar Events.” Anyone interested in this paper may obtain it free by calling Center Street Partners: 574-269-6592.

Skiles said, “I spent 8 weeks studying this topic and eight hours writing this paper … which someone can read in 20 minutes. If anyone would like a historical and economic overview of these years, I can save that person a lot of study time.” Skiles added, “As my paper shows, history can be disturbing.”