Americas Great Depression by Murray N. Rothbard

Americas Great Depression Reviews

• 
  Stephen

  This is a torrid love letter to laissez faire economics sure to raise a fiscal chubby on fans of the Austrian School of Economics (ASE). Of course, if limited government (i.e., NONE), free markets (i.e., unrestrained capitalism) and non-intervention with the money supply (i.e., the Federal Reserve must go) are not under-pinnings of your own economic beliefs, or (i.e., the ASE is just not your bag), this book may cause hives and periodic bouts of severe chafing. I kept a jumbo jar of Aloe next to me while reading in case I started to itch.
  
  Now, if you're not entirely sure what your tolerance for the invisible fist hand of laissez faire is, I’ve included the following excerpt from the book which should be more than adequate to help you test your relative placement along the spectrum of economic theory:

  If government wishes to alleviate, rather than aggravate, a depression, its only valid course is laissez-faire – to leave the economy alone. Only if there is no interference, direct or threatened, with prices, wage rates, and business liquidation will the necessary adjustment proceed with smooth dispatch.
  
  Any propping up of shaky positions postpones liquidation and aggravates unsound conditions. Propping up wage rates creates mass unemployment, and bolstering prices perpetuates and creates unsold surpluses.
  
  Moreover, a drastic cut in the government budget – both in taxes and expenditures – will of itself speed adjustment by changing social choice toward more saving and investment relative to consumption. For government spending, whatever the label attached to it, is solely consumption; any cut in the budget therefore raises the investment-consumption ratio in the economy and allows more rapid validation of originally wasteful and loss-yielding projects.
  
  Hence, the proper injunction to government in a depression is cut the budget and leave the economy strictly alone.

  Now take a moment to examine yourself for any severe physiological changes and you should have a good idea of where you reside in relation to the Austrian School.
  
  PLOT SUMMARY
  
  This is one of the classics of the Austian School written by one of its staunchest proponents. In it, Rothbard sets forth the foundational tenets of ASE philosophy and then ruthlessly applies them against what he describes as the disastrous actions of the government from 1921-1933. Actions that he argues led inexorably to, and greatly extended, the Great Depression.
  
  Rothbard traces the inflationary practices of the Federal Reserve (which the ASE despises and considers the earthly manifestation of SATAN) beginning in 1921 and argues that the Fed's manipulations of the money supply and its artificial expansion of available credit was a root cause of the factors that would eventually lead to the Great Depression. Rothbard explains that when money and credit become too easy to obtain, the market spends the money unwisely and it leads to an over supply of unneeded assets (the BOOM) that must eventually be liquidated (the BUST). The arguments made by Rothbard are more expansive and far more detailed, but that is the gist.
  
  Rothbard then turns to President Herbert Hoover and the gloves come off as he presents a scathing indictment that places the vast majority of the blame for the depth, breadth and duration of Great Depression squarely at the feet of what Rothbard calls the "interventionist" policies of the Hoover administration. Rothbard begins his historical smack down by debunking the commonly held view that President Hoover was a hands off, free market supporter and that it was his adherence to the principals of “laissez faire” that led to the onset of the Great Depression. Rothbard argues that this is 180 degrees wrong and goes to great lengths to demonstrate how the “do nothing” President had both hands up to the elbow inside the economy trying to manipulate the market.
  
  This chronicle of the Hoover adminstrations policies takes up the last half of the book and is incredibly well laid out and pretty nasty. Among Hoover’s many “interventionist” mistakes, Rothbard discusses:

  ** Hoover's "voluntarism" which Rothbard decries as nothing more than massive government coercion of the country’s leading companies to “maintain wage rate, expand construction and cooperate regarding allocating reduced work.”
  
  ** Pushing for the passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff which had a significantly negative effect on international trade just as the economy was in decline. 
   
  ** Weakening bankruptcy laws which allowed unsustainable companies to continue to operate rather than being able to redeploy their assets into more productive endeavors. 
  
  ** Encouraging the Federal Reserve (i.e., SATAN) to expand credit, reduce interest rates and bolster shaky financial positions, thus continuing to encourage bad investments and speculation.    
  
  ** Pressuring Employers’ to maintain current levels of employment and not make required layoffs.
   
  ** Imposing limits on immigration and deported illegal aliens (Hoover was hoping to reduce unemployment by “reducing supply” in the available workforce.
   
  ** Pushing for laws limiting the hours construction workers on Federal projects could work per day.
   
  ** Publicly condemning short selling and supporting legislation banning the practice.
  
  ** Enacting one of the largest tax increases in history while the U.S. economy was tanking.

  All of these actions Rothbard argues had the opposite effect from what the Hoover administration intended and led the United States into the worst economic downturn in its history. The analysis and the support for his position is cogent and if not always engaging. Whether it is persuasive or not I will leave to you as much of the answer to that question will depend on what you bring with you to the reading.
  
  FINAL THOUGHTS
  
  For me, I couldn't buy off on all of his assertions but that has nothing to do with the presentation of Rothbard's work in this book. I found his case well laid out and it was obvious that he has a firm command of his subject matter. He appeared just as comfortable discussing macro philosophical principals as he was applying those principals to a specific historical example. 
  
  Overall, this was an interesting, thorough analysis of the causes of the Great Depression from a perspective I had not previously encountered. It is certainly worth checking out by anyone with an interest in economic history and philosophy whether or not you end up drinking the kool-aid and buying off on Rothbard's conclusions.
  
  4.0 stars. Highly Recommended (unless you begin to chafe).
• 
  Patrick Peterson

  2022-06-27 Just saw a talk on the Great Depression that picked up on one of the same themes of the Great Depression (GD) that this book covered, but this book was not referred to. So I thought that it is long overdue for me to review it here.
  
  I read this in college or shortly thereafter (~1976-80). Rothbard did a great job of explaining what business cycles are about, various theories that try to deal with them and the key one created by Ludwig Mises, and to some extent Friedrich Hayek, called the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle (ATBC).
  
  The key history of the Federal Reserve Board's manipulation of the money supply in the 1920s is explained as well as the Smoot Hawley Tariff and measures that Herbert Hoover and Congress took to deal with the Stock Market crash of 1929 and subsequent business depression.
  
  The facts of all the interventions in the market that Hoover took, contradicting the pervasive myths that have tainted most everyone's "understanding" of Hoover's "doing nothing" about the depression are exposed.
  
  This book lays the original cause of the depression on the Fed's doorstep and the depth and length (up through 1932 only!) and insanity about all this on Hoover. Depending on the edition of this book one reads, you will get various introductions that bring the ATBC's powers of explanation to bear on "recent" recessions. What a tour de force and enlightening addition to the original book.
  
  Highly recommended.
  
  Caveat: The book's analysis of the GD was wonderful for the causes and through the Hoover years. But what the heck happened to the FDR years?????????????? Amazing to me that Rothbard stopped the book at the end of 1932 and did not continue with FDR's unconscionable continuation of even worse policies than Hoover and their exacerbating and lengthening the miseries and ill effects/policies of the GD, some of which continue to plague us today.
• 
  Gabriel

  I am deeply skeptical of the "Austrian School" of economics so I felt it important to start reading a bit more about it, if for no other reason to help sharpen my arguments against it. In that role, this book largely succeeds. It is dated, and a serious adherent to the philosophy might point me elsewhere to catch up (and I'll be poking around), but it is still clear and relevant.
  
  The book, fairly succinctly, makes the case that it is government intervention in the markets, and only government intervention, that drives the boom-and-bust business cycle and economic depressions are purely a product of the (presumably unintended) consequences government action. Well, that is clearly nonsense, but if you are willing willing to prune through some of the arguments you can learn a lot that is, I think, true.
  
  Where the book fails to make its case is it never really considers the role of World War I in creating the global economic imbalances of the 1920s. It blows right by the possibility that most cataclysmic of events could have shaped the economic destiny of the ensuing decades, particularly in Europe where they struggled under the enormous load of war debts to America. The book also never hints at the role of fraud in the build-up of the stock market in the 1920s - everything is laid at the feet of the "easy money" policy of the federal reserve and at the rah-rah boosting of sentiment by government officials. Never mind that the easy money policy Rothbard so deplores was executed to support the gold standard he so strongly believes in! Neglecting these does serious harm to credibility of his thesis.
  
  His polemics against fractional reserve banking are border-line delusional. That is an institution that is never going away - indeed, without it, we simply could not finance the industrial society we live in today and life would collapse to the standards of the eighteenth century. We, as a civilization, have decided the occasional cost of bank runs is well worth the long-term benefit, thank you.
  
  The most amusing failure though is the assertion that economic theory cannot be judged by how well it matches data - it can only be judged by its logical internal consistency and by how appealing its arguments are! While it is true that economic data is terrifically complex, and easy to misinterpret (and is often misinterpreted willfully to meet an agenda), you simply cannot assert your theories are exempt from the scrutiny of real data. Of course, Rothbard goes on to ignore this restriction and applies every economic statistic he can that could possibly support his thesis and either quietly ignores everything else or points to them as confounding features actually driven by other factors that he doesn't need to explain because they are too complex!
  
  All that said, the book is still worth reading both (a) to help to understand Austrian School adherents (who have a lot of sway today with the push for austerity) and (b) because he does make some good points with respect to government intervention in markets. He lists a series of devastating critiques of the Hoover administrations attempts at price-fixing and shows how often that backfires. He also convincingly demonstrates that "make-work" programs that don't add real economic value cannot succeed (so don't believe people when they tell you the government should pay people to dig holes and then fill them) and that propping up input costs (like labor) in the face of falling prices can have very negative consequences if business can no longer remain profitable.
  
  So - a good and important read that makes some excellent points, even if you find yourself laughing out loud occasionally.
• 
  Josiah Edwards

  Don't you hate it when you're talking with someone and they bring up the great depression and they say something weird, like, "if people didn't spend so much money we wouldn't have had such high inflation", or, "if the government had just stimulated the economy MORE (i.e. spent more money) then the depression would've ended sooner", and you think to yourself, "...what the heck are you talking about" but you also don't actually know what they're talking about so you don't say anything?
  Me too. But now I kinda know what they're talking about, and I can say, "no. I disagree. But I understand your point". Thanks Rothbard.
  
  P.S. Hopefully I've convinced you to read it. It got a bit technical, but was well thought out and can be understood at many different comprehension levels. The ideas discussed in this book come up in life more often than you think.
• 
  Ken Doggett

  This is practically a technical handbook on how to screw up the economy so bad that it can take years to recover--if recovery is even possible.
  
  The author names the people involved, the tangle of agencies and bureaucracies they created, the wild-eyed philosophies they espoused, and the step-by-step tinkering by the Feds that, step-by-step, made things worse. Reading this book, I now know where Ayn Rand got the idea for her book, Atlas Shrugged. You can also see where some of the empty political rhetoric and programs today came from, and see how they're still making things worse.
  
  The Great Depression gained its foothold much earlier than the Hoover Administration, when government tinkering according to the Keynesian philosophy under the oversight of Wilson, Harding, and Coolidge created the boom of the Roaring Twenties. But under that system, every boom has its bust, and the bust came in at about the same time Hoover did. I knew going in that Hoover was a humanitarian, not the ogre that we have been presented with, but it was his humanitarianism that was his downfall. Instead of allowing the economy its much-needed self corrections after the boom, he gripped the economy even tighter, doing all the wrong things at the wrong times in hopes of easing the misery. He only heightened it, and prolonged it.
  
  The author states, "President Hoover, often considered to be a staunch exponent of laissez-faire, had amassed by far the largest peacetime deficit yet known to American history...Hoover had indeed 'placed humanity before money through the sacrifice of profits and dividends before wages,' [Hoover's words] but people found it difficult to subsist or prosper on humanity."
  
  When Democrat Franklin Roosevelt came in, he not only maintained the grip Hoover had placed on the economy, he doubled down on it, and the Great Depression would last for a decade longer--until we were "rescued" by WWII.
  
  This book is complex, and slow going in places, but it's a must for anyone who is disillusioned by the Keynesian economics, and wants a dose of reality to explain what went wrong then--and now. I rated it 5 out of 5 stars.
  
• 
  Alan Johnson

  I read this book in the late 1970s (I'm guessing about 1977), along with competing analyses by Milton Friedman and John Kenneth Galbraith, among others. In my view, Rothbard's principal contribution is his demonstration that it was the deliberate governmental inflation of the money supply during the 1920s that led to the 1929 stock market crash. As President Calvin Coolidge famously said, "The business of America is business," and the Republican administrations of the 1920s did everything they could to stimulate business by using inflationary policies to create an artificial boom. The chickens came home to roost in 1929. Whether or not the Austrian School's disagreement with Keynesianism (increasing government spending and money supply during recessions and decreasing same during booms) is correct I leave to the economists. The Keynesian approach makes sense to me, but I am not an economic expert. Note that the Republican increase of the money supply during the "Roaring Twenties" was exactly the wrong thing to do under a Keynesian approach.
  
  (originally posted March 16, 2014; final sentence added on August 9, 2022)
• 
  Paul DeSanctis

  A must read for every economist and politician. Rothbard applies the Austrian business cycle theory to the Great Depression; illustrating how the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies of the 1920s created a massive bubble in the stock and real estate markets, which precipitated the 1929 crash. Then Hoover started a trade war with the Smoot Hawley tariff and set wage controls in the face of deflation - which paralyzed the market adjustment and caused mass unemployment. He also embarked on public works projects, which FDR later expanded on and ultimately caused the Depression to last until the wake of WWII.
  
  
  This book turns the notion of Capitalism causing the Great Depression on its head. Very relevant to what’s going on right now with Trump’s tariffs, the Fed raising rates after having them at 0% for seven years, and Bernie Sanders arguing for a $15/hr. minimum wage...
  
  4/5 ✨
• 
  Jay

  Thoroughly debunks that myth that Hoover was a laissez-faire president and that too much capitalism brought on the Great Depression. Reads like a technical banking manual at times, and Rothbard's disdain for intervention in the markets comes through at odd intervals. One criticism I have is Rothbard's constant use of AMOUNTS instead of PERCENTAGES. To explain inflation he'll say the money supply increased by X amount of dollars, rather than by X percentage, making context very difficult.
• 
  Roman Skaskiw

  Difficult for me to decide on the number of stars.
  
  5 because the ideas in this book shake the very ground I walk on.
  
  4 because it's very technical and assumes knowledge of some economic terms.
• 
  Octavio Iza

  «Un mercado libre de intervenciones no generaría auges y depresiones y, enfrentado con una depresión generada con anterioridad por alguna intervención, terminaría rápidamente con la depresión y, particularmente, el desempleo. Nuestra preocupación, entonces [...] (es) el estudio de las acciones de los culpables y responsables de generar e intensificar la depresión: el gobierno.»
  
  El Dr. Rothbard lanza luz sobre las causas de la Gran Depresión desde una visión diferente a lo comúnmente establecido. El libro comienza con una explicación magnánima sobre los ciclos económicos desde la teoría económica heterodoxa de la escuela Austriaca, haciendo base en los postulados de la praxeología Misesiana, logrando una explicación fácil de entender si se le dedica cierta atención. Se logra así preparar la base para el análisis impecable que Rothbard realiza sobre las causas de la peor crisis económica vista por el hombre.
  
  Luego de introducirnos en la teoría, Rothbard lanza un estudio de los años 1920 a 1929, y analiza como el auge ficticio de los «roaring twenties», creado por la intervención económica del gobierno de E.E.U.U., sumado a la Reserva Federal, el banco central de Nueva York, y los bancos centrales de las principales potencias europeas (principalmente Inglaterra y Francia), con ayuda de los bancos comerciales y las asociaciones de la misma esfera, llevaron al crack del ‘29 y los subsiguientes años de decadencia económica en el mundo. En este análisis se incluye un importante estudio del proceso inflacionario, y los diversos aspectos del crecimiento de la oferta monetaria, por eso es fundamental entender el marco conceptual del principio.
  
  El libro es también un estudio político, sobre la presidencia de Coolidge, pero principalmente sobre la de Hoover, y sus intentos por seguir expandiendo el crédito comenzada la crisis, en esto Rothbard desafía la visión tradicional de que los «liquidacioncitas» y sus ideas fueron las que predominaron durante principio de los treintas, mientras que sostiene que el «New deal» de Hoover (que preparo el camino para las medidas de Roosevelt) fue en naturaleza inflacionista, y se aplicaron medidas anti-liquidacionistas desde el principio de la crisis, expandiendo obra pública, gasto estatal, déficits presupuestarios, y el mantenimiento de los salarios. De cada uno de estos efectos Rothbard habla en detalle, y demuestra como sus efectos no solo fallaron en su objetivo, sino que incluso profundizaron la crisis.
  
  Un libro muy completo para su corta extensión, recomendable para cualquier aficionado de la economía, o de la historia. El uso de la estadística y de hechos empíricos, sumado a los razonamientos de Rothbard, hacen la fortaleza de sus argumentos, y crean una impecable explicación de la gran depresión.
  
  Me pregunto qué análisis haría Rothbard de la República Argentina, mi país, si pudiese observar que, llegando a los cien años desde aquella crisis, continuamos aplicando las mismas medidas contra las que el tanto predico, y que seguimos obteniendo los mismos resultados que el predijo sobre la intervención estatal de la económica: pobreza; inflación; y desocupación.
  
• 
  Marcus Goncalves

  Read Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression. A 1963 treatise on the 1930s Great Depression and its root causes, written by this remarkable Austrian School economist. Worth reading as we seem not to learn the lessons from the past.
• 
  Brad Harris

  I wouldn't say this book is majorly enjoyable to read. It's tough to be honest, but that is not the goal of a book like this. The goal of this book is to layout the postulation that the depression was not caused by lassie Faire, but rather by intervention. Rothbard beats this dead horse until no one can refute his claim. The sheer amount of figures, for which he explains how he calculates things, is enough for me to accept his claim.
  
  Noteworthy, this book focuses almost solely on the hoover Era when the intervention got started and popularized to later be used by Roosevelt.
• 
  Andrew Skretvedt

  I read a then current 5th edition copy in PDF form from the mises.org website.
  
  A fabulous and eerily familiar read resonating strongly with the current 2008-2009 state of affairs, as it has also with previous major recessions.
  
  Each significant crises validates and reinforces the precepts of this book. A priori proof of the validity of classical economics and the perspective of the Austrian school. It's straightforward and really, uncomplicated.
  
  Keynesianism was borne out of the actions taken by our government to combat the Great Depression. Such stuff is shown in the book to be utterly without merit and unable to stand up to close scrutiny.
  
  Obscuration and political expedience combine to keep the authentically discredited work of Keynes around as the go-to playbook for fighting recession.
  
  This book will teach you about the failings of Keynes' ideas; how experiments in Keynesianism by Hoover and Roosevelt actually hurt people and extended the Great Depression, and how advocates of Keynes' ideas are either ignorant of better operating and more complete Austrian theory, indoctrinated by modern curricula which teach only Keynesianism, or (most dangerously) are simply disingenuous.
  
  -----
  
  I give it 4/5 for it's instructive primer at the beginning, detailed and interesting historical account, and carefully annotated format. I was left desperate for a continuation into the factors which finally broke the depression with the dawn of WWII. This is missing, which is unfortunate, because such would give the Austrian perspective a bonus slam dunk against other, less complete, theories. In debates with friends, it is about the endgame of the depression which is logically their first challenge to me, and mentally me to myself.
  
  I understand how Keynesian interventions can and did prolong the suffering of the depression. But, then WWII happened and was followed by a post war mega boom that is still in place (though battered, recently). I naturally want to know why things ultimately ended up so good, if Roosevelt's actions (and Hoover's before him) were so bad.
  
  I seek answers to the question of the depression's endgame elsewhere. Will report here on findings.
• 
  Clinton

  Of all the Austrian School of Economics literature, America’s Great Depression by Murray Rothbard ranks among the top five most significant intellectual books. Not only is the book extraordinarily enlightening, but Rothbard mystically crafts conventional wisdom and transforms it into sensible and logical content.
  The book is separated into three parts. Part one details how the depression occurred through the eyes of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory. The business cycle is a byproduct of the manipulation and failed intervention into markets by central banks and governments. The key culprit is the monetary expansion of credit through low interest rates. This creates an economic boom; however, the boom is not real economic growth; the boom is really just over-consumption and malinvestments provided by inflation, and the bust is the correcting readjustment process of markets. Part two and three explains the timeline of specific events with the subsequent crash of the stock market in 1929 through Hoover’s Administration. President Herbert Hoover was far from a lassize-faire advocate. He was one of the biggest interventionist presidents in the history of the United States. He was an incessant champion of inflationist policies, stabilization of prices and wages, and extreme protectionist concerning tariffs. Despite President Hoover using every progressive economic method of government interventionism, he left America in compete devastation with unprecedented length and concentration even though he was described as the shining white knight.
  Other than Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market and Mises’ Human Action, America’s Great Depression is astonishing, and it incredibly explains the disaster of government inflation in creating economic booms followed by the inevitable bust, and the depression was prolonged by government interventionist policies. Overall, the Great Depression is a significant time in United States history, and this book goes beyond the scope of what really happened compared to that of conventional wisdom.
  
• 
  Michael Huang

  This book has a high average rating. So I was fully expected to enjoy it. It turns out, I did not. I would guess many reviewers are proponents of the Austrian school of economics.
  
  As for the book itself, in terms of effort, there is no denying there is a lot going into the book. For example, the book painstakingly documented things Hoover did to intervene in the economy. And a central theme is that, contrary to popular belief, Hoover's policies are not laissez-faire ones, but heavily interventionist in nature.
  
  But in terms of real insight, I don't think the book offers much. The belief in the infallibility of the Austrian school of economics is deeply entrenched. There is no attempt to prove/convince that the theory is right. Instead, assertions are everywhere. Some arguments seem plausible, while others much less so. But the tone of the argument would have you believe that to doubt the assertion is lunacy. I'm no economist, but I'm not sure the Austrian logic about how to handle a severe recession/depression is convincing.
  
  Finally, even the book itself admitted that the policies set out in the Hoover administration are to put humanity in front of profits. So in the event of recessions induced by wrong-headed polices I don't know what the author would have recommended as policies anyways.
• 
  Bob Aarhus

  Deconstructing step-by-step the Keynesian economics that put us there, Rothbard (an unabashed student of the Austrian school) shows in meticulous detail that Government intervention lengthened, not shortened, America's period of greatest economic hardship. Faced with two equal and opposite choices -- allow the banks to fail, or allow the currency to fail -- the nascent Fed chose the former; further political strategems clouded much of the macroeconomic picture to the point where the situation appeared intractable. Conventional wisdom says World War II snapped us out of the depression; Rothbard suggests (and strongly supports the position) that allowing Market forces to come to equilibrium would have solved the problem faster. Reading it today in the age of massive bailouts of the derivatives and real estate industries should give the reader pause to ask the question: is Government intervention necessary, or even wise?
• 
  Jeff

  This is the book at converted me to the Austrian School of Economics several years ago. For anyone who thought that the Great Depression was a failure of laissez-faire capitalism, AGD is a must-read. Besides explaining the causes of the GD, Rothbard destroys the myth that Hoover and Roosevelt were polar opposites. In fact, since The New Deal was merely a continuation of Hoover's policies, Rothbard's historical focus covers the period from 1921-1933. Much of the focus is on the Fed-created boom of the 1920s, which sewed the seeds for the disaster that followed and was perpetuated by Hoover and Roosevelt. I'm reading AGD for the second time. Recent events in the world economy give this work an extra aura of immediacy.
• 
  John Boettcher

  This is the most complete, accurate account of what really took place before, during, and after the Great Depression. This will put to rest all of the fallacies and mis-information that we all learned in school, such as WW2 got us out of the great depression and that the Federal Reserve had to exist to keep the country in tact, when in fact the exact opposite is true.
  
  The book is not the easiest read in the world, but it has to go through a plethora of information to accurately portray the actual events that lead up to the depression, what caused it, and what made it perpetuate for as long as it did. The true story about what happened will challenge everything you have heard in school about our omnipotent government and the central banking system.
• 
  Rich

  This book relates the history of the Great Depression that you weren't taught in public school. I am amazed how politicians are trusted like angels to do the right thing. This book is so revealing about both republican and democrat presidents and how both parties protect their own self interests rather than the public's. I will never see President Hoover in the same light again. He may have been a smart man and a great engineer but it's hard to engineer an entire national economy. There is no substitute for Individual self reliance, adherence to liberty and freedom, and healthy skepticism for government 'solutions' to our problems.
• 
  David

  This is one of the first books on economics I ever read, when I was a junior in high school. It really helped me to understand the parts that didn't make sense about what they were teaching in school on the Great Depression. I would really like to go back and read it again now, and see if I'd still have as high an opinion of it. But from what I remember, the scholarship was quite good, and the arguments well reasoned. I'm not sure if I made it all the way through back then, but I remember it being relatively readable and entertaining for a work on economics.
• 
  Eric

  Murray Rothbard applies the Austrian economic theory to the Great Depression, and analyzes the lead up to the depression and the myth that Hoover was "Laizzes Faire". Everybody knows Roosevelt extended the depression through his "New Deal", but somehow the myth perpetuates that Hoover wasn't an interventionist. Rothbard expertly shreds that myth.
  
  The depression would have been over in about a year to a year and a half (like all other panics and depressions that preceded it) had Hoover simply kept his damn hands off the economy.
• 
  Rafa Sánchez

  It is very sad to read how many of the wrong decisions made in the early thirties are back in nowadays global crisis. Same measures, same justifications, same short sights... 80 years have passed and it seems we cannot learn from past errors, we prefer to follow the statist propaganda and moral comfort mainstream. The outcome of current interventionist policies is outlined in this 1963 book: 10 years of unemployment, depression and suffering for the weak.
• 
  Marcus Christianson

  The second worst exposition of ABCT there is. I’m pretty sure Rothbard himself didn’t understand what he was writing about. If you want a better version of this read de Soto’s money, banking, and economic cycles or Mises’s work on ABCT though it’s a lot more dense and obtuse.