''America's Great Depression'' is a 1963 treatise on the 1930s

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

and its root causes, written by

Austrian School The Austrian school is a Heterodox economics, heterodox Schools of economic thought, school of economic thought that advocates strict adherence to methodological individualism, the concept that social phenomena result primarily from the motivat ...

economist Murray Rothbard. The book blames government policy failures for the Great Depression, and challenges the widely-held view that

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...

is unstable.

Summary

Rothbard argues that it was the interventionist policies of the

Herbert Hoover Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was the 31st president of the United States, serving from 1929 to 1933. A wealthy mining engineer before his presidency, Hoover led the wartime Commission for Relief in Belgium and ...

administration which magnified the duration, breadth, and intensity of the Great Depression. Rothbard explains the Austrian theory of the business cycle, which holds that government manipulation of the money supply sets the stage for the familiar " boom-bust" phases of the modern market. He then details the

inflation In economics, inflation is an increase in the average price of goods and services in terms of money. This increase is measured using a price index, typically a consumer price index (CPI). When the general price level rises, each unit of curre ...

ary policies of the Federal Reserve from 1921 to 1929 as evidence that the depression was essentially caused not by speculation, but by government and central bank interference in the market.

Publishing history

* 1st Edition: Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1963. Hardcover. 361 pages. * 2nd Edition: Menlo Park, California: Institute for Humane Studies, 1972. 361 pages. . * 3rd Edition: New York: New York University Press. Co-sponsored by Institute for Humane Studies. 1975. Paperback. 361 pages. . Hardcover . * 4th Edition: New York: Richardson & Snyder/E.P. Dutton. 1983. Hardcover. 361 pages. . * 5th Edition: Auburn, Ala.:

Ludwig von Mises Institute The Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics, or Mises Institute, is a nonprofit think tank headquartered in Auburn, Alabama, that is a center for Austrian economics, right-wing libertarian thought and the paleolibertarian and anarcho ...

, June 15, 2000. Hardcover. 368 pages. . (With an introduction by Paul Johnson)

References

External links

''America's Great Depression''
at Mises Wiki
''America's Great Depression'': Complete Text in HTML format(also in PDF format)
{{Rothbard books 1963 non-fiction books Books by Murray Rothbard Non-fiction books about the Great Depression