A Quote by Milton Friedman

The stock market crashed in October 1929. But that was not the cause of what caused the Great Depression. It was, in my opinion, a very minor element of it. What happened was that from 1929 to 1933 you had a major contraction which, in my opinion, was caused primarily by the failure of the Federal Reserve System, to follow the course of action for which it was set up. It was set up to prevent exactly what happened from 1929 to 1933. But instead of preventing it, they facilitated it.

Milton Friedman

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Action Cause Caused Contraction Course Depression Element Exactly Exactly What Failure Federal Federal Reserve Follow Great Great Depression Had Happened In My Opinion Instead Major Market Market Crash Minor October Opinion Prevent Preventing Primarily Reserve Set Stock Stock Market Stock Market Crash System Up Very Which

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Milton Friedman
American - Economist
July 31, 1912 - November 16, 2006

The Federal Reserve the privately owned U.S. central bank definitely caused The Great Depression by contracting the amount of currency in circulation by one third from 1929 to 1933.

Milton Friedman

The Depression, which started in 1929 was rather mild from 1929 to 1930. And, indeed, in my opinion would have been over in 1931 at the latest had it not been that the Federal Reserve followed a policy which led to bank failures, widespread bank failures, and led to a reduction in the quantity of money.

Milton Friedman

What happened was that for every $100 of money, by which I mean the cash that people keep in their pockets, and the deposits they have in the bank, for every $100 of money that there was in 1929, by 1933 there was only $67. The Federal Reserve allowed the quantity of money to decline by a third. While, at all times, it had the possibilities and the power of preventing that from happening.

Milton Friedman

Importantly, in the 1930s, in the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve, despite its mandate, was quite passive and, as a result, financial crisis became very severe, lasted essentially from 1929 to 1933.

Ben Bernanke

The Fed was largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe. Instead of using its powers to offset the depression, it presided over a decline in the quantity of money by one-third from 1929 to 1933 ... Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government.

Milton Friedman

We had a booming stock market in 1929 and then went into the world's greatest depression. We have a booming stock market in 1999. Will the bubble somehow burst, and then we enter depression? Well, some things are not different.

Jeffrey Sachs

Normally, the market peaks before bad news emerges. That's what happened in 1929, and that's what happened in 2000.

Kenneth Fisher

The stock market is but a mirror which provides an image of the underlying or fundamental economic situation. Cause and effect run from the economy to the stock market, never the reverse. In 1929 the economy was headed for trouble. Eventually that trouble was violently reflected in Wall Street.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Ever since the Great Depression, economists have known that demand shortages tend to persist in the wake of severe financial crises like the ones that happened in 1929 and 2008.

Bob Frank

The Great Depression was not a sign of the failure of monetary policy or a result of the failure of the market system as was widely interpreted. It was instead a consequence of a very serious government failure, in particular a failure in the monetary authorities to do what they'd initially been set up to do.

Milton Friedman

Monetary contractions are attractive as the key shocks in the 1929-1933 years, and in other severe depressions, because there do not seem to be any other candidates.

Robert Lucas, Jr.

If you had asked people in 1929, 'Here is what is about to happen. How much would you pay to avoid the Great Depression from occurring?' The answer is they would have paid a lot. They would have borrowed money if it could be used to prevent the Great Depression.

Austan Goolsbee

The stock market crash in October 1929 didn't destroy a particularly large amount of wealth or make people highly pessimistic. Rather, it made companies and consumers very unsure about future income, and so led them to stop spending as they waited for more information.

Christina Romer

After 1929, so many people had been traumatized by the stock market crash that there was a lost generation.

Ron Chernow

Smoot and Hawley ginned up The Tariff Act of 1930 to get America back to work after the Stock Market Crash of '29. Instead, it destroyed trade so effectively that by 1932, American exports to Europe were just a third of what they had been in 1929. World trade fell two-thirds as other nations retaliated. Jobs evaporated.

Elaine Chao

What happened is we went into a recession beginning in December of 2007 that was the worst since 1929. And it is a very deep hole that we have been struggling to get out of.

Austan Goolsbee

A Quote by Milton Friedman

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