I think I have a better way of making the point you're trying to make. You're rebutting the claim that reliance on the gold standard made the depression worse.

I think I have a better way of making the point you're trying to make. You're rebutting the claim that reliance on the gold standard made the depression worse. However, in the early 1930s, the monetary use of gold was criminalized in the USA. In fact, possession of gold itself was illegal for individuals (with the exception of jewelry) until sometime in the 1970s! while many people refused to turn the gold in as the government demanded in the 1930s, they instead shipped it overseas, and at any rate you couldn't do contracts in gold or make payments in gold without risk of getting in trouble. This action effectively invalidated much (maybe most?) of the countries wealth, and so it is no surprise that the result was a great depression, or a prolonged depression. Further, rather than adhering to a hard money position, as is popular for political economists to posit today, the actual position was inflationary. This position is well argued by Rothbard in his book "America's Great Depression". The reason the myth of "hard money" prolonging the great depression persists, is because governments want an inflationary monetary policy to allow them to spend without the fiscal restraint that would be imposed by having to raise via taxes and fees, all the money they want to spend. Your position is absolutely right, and you've been attacked by others for citing someone with the "fallacy of appeal to old foggies". Rothbard's analysis was done in the 1970s, I believe, and is effectively contemporary. (Or at least I'm not aware of any serious attempts to refute it.) Unfortunately, in popular culture the science of economics does not get much respect, going against the popular political perception of inflation being "good" and I've gotten banned from hacker news for making economic arguments like the one I've just made. Which is why this is the first post from a new account. (It is unfortunate that Hacker News does not tolerate differing opinions. But as anyone can see from this post, the salient fact-- that gold was banned-- is undisputed historical fact that blows the operating theory out of the water... and thus I have contributed to this discussion historical facts that are relevant to it. Should I be praised for that? Or banned for disagreeing with the party line? (or for pointing out that I've been banned in the past? I think the censorious nature of this site is employed to keep hidden its intolerance... so I might get the ban for that... but you never know because there is no warning, you just suddenly get the ax. My last account's karma was about 1,200 acquired over 6 months of contributions.) Consider this warning about the nature of this site the payment I require for going thru the effort of making a new account to contribute this critical historical fact to the discussion.