Chairman Bernanke agrees with Friedman that the Federal Reserve is largely to blame for the Great Depression, but he draws a different lesson from the central bank’s disastrous mistake. That difference helps explain Bernanke’s eagerness for the Fed to play a larger role in centrally planning the U.S. economy.

Jeffrey Rogers Hummel is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Professor of Economics at San Jose State University.
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Other Independent Review articles by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel
Winter 2022/23 Operation Keelhaul: Forced Repatriation after World War II
Spring 2014 The Inevitability of a U.S. Government Default
Spring 2001 The Will to Be Free: The Role of Ideology in National Defense
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