Have you ever read Austrian School Economist Murray Rothbard's account of the Great Depression?

Question

It is available at;

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/agd/contents.asp

He's just about spot on in evaluating every aspect of it and it makes more sense than the mainstream arguments. Why isn't this stuff more widely known?

Answer 1

Actually, the Austrian school in general has had a lot of good insight on these questions. And ECONOMISTS are, I'm sure, VERY familiar with the work of these folks, esp. Hayek (*The Road to Serfdom*). On a more popular level, even PBS exposed the general public to some "Austrian thinking" with the Milton Friedman *Free to Choose* series, and the book was very popular too. (Whether you agree with its particulars, it was the first exposure many got to the idea that it was NOT capitalism that was the problem!)

As for why the general public does not know or hear much about these views, there is a LOT of politics involved in that. The press, and many politicians (at least one entire party) could not bear to seriously examine how Saint FDR's policies may actually have made things worse!


I like Rothbard's work on this, esp. his corrections about what happened under Hoover. But I've always been disappointed that he did not do more with examining FDR's policies.

In fact, your timing is interesting, because a work that does a fantastic job of BOTH has just come out and is getting rave reviews as THE definitive "revisionist" history of the Great Depression, viz., Amity Shlaes's *The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression*

I have heard her interviews and read a number of reviews, I and am looking forward to getting my hands on the book (I quickly became the SEVENTH hold for the book in our local library, thought it's not been processed yet! I'll probably break down an buy it before seeing it!)

One excellent review with a lot of good summary is Steven Hayward's for the American Enterprise Institute. Check in out here:
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.26494/publication.asp

Answer 2

Thanks for the link but it has to be consolidated into about 30 minutes of reading.

Basic-ly too much money was injected by the FED, which contributed to the 1929 crash. The Fed then tightened the money supply, causing the depression, which was made much, much worse by Roosevelt stealing all the peoples real money,,,,Gold.

With little or no money in circulation, the overall economy stagnated.

Does this sound correct?
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Answer 3

No