Economists' fascination with the description and interpretation of the severity and duration of the Great Depression has not flagged in the seven decades since its onset. What began as an investigation centering on the U.S. Depression experience has broadened in recent years to cover the experience of countries around the world. At least five of the nine essays that Bernanke has collected in this volume (some with coauthors, and only one not previously published) …
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…the evidence for or against it has been examined. That claim (pp. 77-78, 104, n. 23, 153) is that the Federal Reserve could not have mitigated the Depression because the United States would have been forced off the gold standard had the Federal Reserve pursued expansionary monetary policy. When a leading economist exposits such a claim, many adopt it in deference to his insight, with no evidence, in the kind of herd behavior that economists attribute to investors.