The Current Financial Crisis Through the Eyes of the Austrian School

The thesis aims to defend the irreplaceable role of the Austrian business cycle theory in explaining the current financial crisis in the U.S.. Attention is also paid to applied measures of American economic policies and their impact on the elimination of the purification process of the recession. Furthermore, the work deals with the identification of preventive measures, which would reduce the likelihood of the occurrence of economic cycles. Recommendations by representatives of the Austrian School are described as difficult to implement on the basis of number of arguments. In the work are therefore proposed more realistic measures to limit the volatility of the economic cycle, which emanate mainly from the composite price index, which is the subject of this text. The index reflects the price development in all stages of production and should therefore in monetary policy matters replace the current use of price indicators, based on the inflated scale of consumption, taking into account only minimal effects of monetary expansion. The work deals with the calculation of the composite price index for the United States, which used the instrument of Skounsen indicator of gross domestic output. The development of the composite price index in the US is then analyzed and compared with the development of other macroeconomic variables. Based on this examination, we recommend the use of composite price index for monetary policy regime of inflation targeting and the implementation thereof by the Federal Reserve monetary policy.