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It's not a big surprise that you were able to find one economist from 1935 who disagreed. It would have been more surprising if you hadn't been able to. In an

• fexl 15y ago
  He writes a whole book to support those assertions, but I only had time to hit the high points here. I have no interest in getting all religious or dogmatic about gold, silver, bitcoin, US dollars, Euros, or any other form of money. My real point is: let individuals decide what forms of money they wish to use, without harassment. Clearly the practice at the time of banks lending money to buy stocks and Florida real estate, using stocks as collateral for those loans, was insane and unsustainable. In effect, common stocks were indeed monetized, and this led to an enormous boom in the money supply which enabled and encouraged the mis-allocation of capital. When that stops, people suffer, no doubt about it. It was just sick what certain people did back then to keep prices propped up artificially high. They would spy on farmers to make sure they didn't produce too much, and if they did, they'd go in and burn crops and slaughter hogs. This while people were going hungry. I had a neighbor who, as a 14 year old boy, was hired to drive around the countryside spying on farmers. A dry cleaner who charged too little for his services was imprisoned. The authoritarians fought deflation tooth and nail, and years of misery was the result.