There were many attempts to explain what exactly happened to USA?s economy between years 1921 and 1929. First and for many years the only one ?mainstream? explanation was that the main cause of Great Depression was underconsumption and overinvestment brought about by irresponsible customers and much more irresponsible investors. But there were also other explanations, based on totally contradictory conclusions and main cause of business cycles was found in state?s driven monetary expansion.
Murray Rothbard?s explanation, based on Austrian Business Cycle Theory and developed in his book America?s Great Depression (written in 1963), is just one of them. In this book (despite of it has more than 300 pages) he advocates only one receipt how to avoid depressions: to stop FED?s power to inflate. Only this governmental agency, delegated by government to care about money and to expand money stock when necessary, can cause such big depression as Great Depression had been. Natural business cycle, less serious without compare, is organic part of every market and there is no reason to fight against it. But in the background with ever-present governmental attempt to do things better than something uncontrolled like market, business cycle changes itself to destructive long-term process that might take multiple more time to recover back to prosperous and healthy economic system. As Rothbard pointed out, all depressions without governmental interference were short-lived and self-adjustment process completed itself as rapidly as possible.
The main ambition of my work would be to summarize Murray Rothbard?s work regarding Business Cycle and especially Great Depression and put it in context of Austrian Business Cycle Theory. |