The Great Depression: an international disaster of perverse economic policies

Abstract

for two reasons: disillusionment with how macroeconomics is taught at the college level and a commitment to the Friedman and Schwartz interpretation of the Great Depression that the Federal Reserve was an "incredible source of policy errors."From the first assertion, I infer that the audience for this book is primarily college students, though I think it deserves a wider readership among the economically literate.From the second assertion, I infer that they believe that policymakers had the knowledge to have acted differently.However, at no point do the authors make a serious effort to defend that presumption.I will illustrate their neglect with several crucial examples further on.The book makes no pretence at being a contribution to our knowledge of the Great Depression and cannot be judged by such a narrow criterion.