Monetary History of the United States

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A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 is a book written in 1963 by Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz and is considered one of the most influential economics books of the twentieth century.[1]

The book details the role of money in the U.S. economy since the American Civil War. The book criticizes government interventionism (through the Federal Reserve Bank) for causing the Great Depression. The book refutes claims that the free market caused the downturn, and it claims Roosevelt's intervention with price controls and various regulations further exacerabated the country's economic problems after 1932. The book asserts that the death of New York Fed leader, Benjamin Strong, led to a political manipulation of the money supply causing a recession to turn into the Great Depression.

In a 2004 speech, Ben Bernanke, who soon after became chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, said the Monetary History "transformed the debate about the Great Depression."

Bernanke also said, "The Monetary History, the name by which the book is instantly recognized by any macroeconomist, examined in great detail the relationship between changes in the national money stock -- whether determined by conscious policy or by more impersonal forces such as changes in the banking system -- and changes in national income and prices. The broader objective of the book was to understand how monetary forces had influenced the U.S. economy over a nearly a century."[2]