The reason for the 1929 Crash

According to the book, "A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960" the economic downturn in 1929 was really just a severe recession that was aggravated by the economic policies of the Federal Reserve. The book was written by Milton Friedman in 1963. The book was so influencial that Friedman won the Nobel prize for his viewpoints on what went wrong. He argued that the tight monetary policy created by the Federal Reserve because of the boom of the 1920s turned what would have been an otherwise normal recession into the Great Depression of the 1930s.

A friend of mine took economics in college and we have had several discussions about all kinds of things, with him teaching me more than what I knew. He had this book, and I read through it recently. While it has a lot of technical economic discussion, it was very enlightening.

Here is one thing that really stunned me. It took a few years for the Fed to really take over the economy. As a result, this was the first recession that occurred with the Federal Reserve in control of the money. They were the ones that turned a routine recession, and there had been perhaps six of them since the Civil War, into the Great Depression. If we had NOT given the Fed the powers they received, there never would have been a Great Depression!

That should cause us great concern, since it had been the Fed that keeps creating new problems, that they solve by simply printing more money. This will not work!!!

Anyone with any significant interest in all this should definitely read this book!!!

People really need to know the history of how things happened, especially when the same groups are performing the same kinds of deeds.

Wake up and smell the coffee, people!