America's Great Depression


America's Great Depression is a 1963 treatise by Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard on the causes of the 1930s Great Depression. Drawing from the Austrian theory of the business cycle, Rothbard argues that Federal Reserve inflationary policy in the 1920s and Herbert Hoover's interventionist response to the crash, rather than laissez-faire capitalism or private speculation, created and prolonged the depression.

Summary

Rothbard argues that it was Herbert Hoover's interventionist response, not laissez-faire inaction, that deepened and prolonged the Great Depression. Drawing from the Austrian theory of the business cycle, he argues that government manipulation of money supply creates the "boom-bust" cycle in modern economies through malinvestment. Thus, he contends the Federal Reserve's inflationary policies from 1921 to 1929 primed the crash, making the depression the product of government and central-bank interference rather than of unrestrained private speculation.
He also criticizes the Keynesian concept of the "liquidity trap" where Rothbard states,

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