[vijayboyapati]

I've read it. Galbraith's history is ok and his writing is entertaining but his economic analysis is terribly flawed. I recommend Rothbard's America's Great Depression for a solid economic analysis of the causalities involved in taking a market crash and turning it into a depression. The book is available in pdf free online: https://mises.org/library/americas-great-depression

[rjtavares]

Honest question: reading the "Political activism" section of the author's wikipedia article[1] gives me no hope of an unbiased analysis of the situation. In the book, does he try to give a balanced view, or is it a reflection of his own views as an anti-statist Austrian School economist?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard#Political_acti...

[kriro]

It's applied Austrian Economics (what they call history as opposed to theory). It's a pretty good read even if you think Austrians are crackpot-crazy. The train of thought is pretty logically structured. I'm not really aware of a balanced view on the topic so it's a decent idea to start just reading the different views in extreme.

I'd also recommend Friedman's "A Monetary History of the United States" (with a part about the Great Depression) for a Monetarist POV.

"The Great Crash, 1929" by Galbraith provides yet another (institutionalist/Post-Keynesian) POV.

Rothbard was a pretty good scholar even if you completely disagree with him. His "An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought" is a pretty good and well researched set of books.

[rjtavares]

Thank you!

[tiatia]

"... but his economic analysis is terribly flawed."

I doubt that an analysis from the Mises institute is going to enlighten us here. Austrian economics is interesting but fails on long term analysis and deeper insights due to Mises flawed understanding of Money.

A former Austrian...

[irln]

Not as an attack but a real question: Please expand on "Mises flawed understanding of Money."

[tiatia]

I can't. The major book that I would recommend is not available in English.

These are a few links I have posted several times on HN:

"There is No Steady State Economy (except at a very basic level)" http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-stat...

Limits to Growth–At our doorstep, but not recognized http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-growt...

Wealth And Energy Consumption Are Inseparable http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-energy-...

Maybe you can grab a few ideas. A gold backed currency would make no difference. The driving force of capitalism is debt. Debt that needs to be served with more debt (there is no treasure box in the cellar of General Motors that they can use to build car manufacturing plants). To keep the system running you have to continuously create more debt. To be able to do this, you need to have a growing economy, for the economy to grow, you need more energy. To make things worse, this grows exponentially. This is not bad in itself, it has enabled capitalism based economy a tremendous dynamic in the last 150 years.

The Problem: Nothing that growth exponentially can grow very long and nobody has ever been able to show how a system that does not grow anymore or does not create new (higher) debt anymore can work. ("There is no steady state economy").