Causes of the Great Depression
In their 1963 book "A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960", Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz laid out their case for a different explanation of the Great Depression. Essentially, the Great Depression, in their view, was caused by the fall of the money supply. Friedman and Schwartz write: "From the cyclical peak in August 1929 to a cyclical trough in March 1933, the stock of money fell by over a third." The result was what Friedman and Schwartz called "The Great Contraction" — a period of falling income, prices, and employment caused by the choking effects of a restricted money supply. Friedman and Schwartz argue that people wanted to hold more money than the Federal Reserve was supplying. As a result, people hoarded money by consuming less. This caused a contraction in employment and production since prices were not flexible enough to immediately fall. The Fed's failure was in not realizing what was happening and not taking corrective action. In a speech honoring Friedman and Schwartz, Ben Bernanke stated:
Deflation
The deflation of the Great Depression occurred partly because there was an enormous contraction of credit (money), bankruptcies creating an environment where cash was in frantic demand, and when the Federal Reserve was supposed to accommodate that demand, it instead contracted the money supply by 30% in enforcement of its new real bills doctrine, so banks toppled one-by-one (because they were unable to meet the sudden demand for cash see fractional-reserve banking). From the standpoint of the Fisher equation (see above), there was a concomitant drop both in money supply (credit) and the velocity of money which was so profound that price deflation took hold despite the increases in money supply spurred by the Federal Reserve.