Epilogue

The ghost of the twentieth-century Great Depression has hovered over the twenty-first century Great Recession. Benjamin Strong is the ghost returned to scare us away from the mistakes of the onset of the earlier “Great.” But we citizens of the modern world do not need a ghost—a disembodied spiritual guru—for we have the real thing, our own Ben, who is the intellectual heir apparent to the 1920s Benjamin. Our Ben has earned his academic stripes at the feet of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz. While modern Ben is certainly no unquestioning disciple, he does firmly buy-in to what he perceives to be the major policy lesson of Friedman and Schwartz’s Great Depression legacy. Namely, the Fed should not make the mistake of omission committed by those who assumed the leadership role upon the death of the twentieth-century Benjamin. Fed leaders should be decisive, not passive. On the first signs of economic downturn pump up the money supply—buy government bonds—and continue to do so until you see sure signs of economic recovery.