Today’s Wall Street Journal includes a short “Notable and Quotable” feature quoting from Professor Israel Kirzner’s book on Ludwig von Mises.
Kirzner recounts von Mises’ argument (which dates from 1912 in his book The Theory of Money and Credit) that the root cause of business cycles is the artificial expansion of credit through central banks. That causes unsustainable economic distortions, ending in recession or depression (depending on how badly the politicians screw up).
Establishing the Federal Reserve was, I think, the worst of all our many national blunders.
