Bernanke apologizes for the Great Depression

For those interested in learning from history rather than blindly blaming Wall Street and greedy bankers for our current financial crisis, I recommend a Foundation for Economic Education article that takes another look at what really caused the Great Depression. The second paragraph reads:

The Great Depression created a widespread misconception that market economies are inherently unstable and must be managed by the government to avoid large macreconomic fluctuations, that is, business cycles. This view persists to this day despite the more than 40 years since Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz showed convincingly that the Federal Reserve’s monetary policies were largely to blame for the severity of the Great Depression. In 2002 Ben Bernanke (then a Federal Reserve governor, today the chairman of the Board of Governors) made this startling admission in a speech given in honor of Friedman’s 90th birthday: “I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression, you’re right. We did it. We’re very sorry.”

Read the entire article here:
The Great Depression According to Milton Friedman

Steve Buckstein is founder and senior policy analyst at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market research center.