Jan 17, 2008

C.A. Philips, T.F. McManus, and R.W. Nelson on the seeds of World War I inflation

Had it not been for the creation of the Federal Reserve System, there would have been a [lower] limit to the expansion of bank credit during the War. . . . The establishment of the Federal Reserve System, with its pooling and economizing of reserves, thus permitt[ed] a greater credit expansion on a given reserve base. . . . It is in the operations of the Federal Reserve System, then, that the major explanation of the War-time rise in prices lies.

~ C.A. Philips, T.F. McManus, and R.W. Nelson, Banking and the Business Cycle: A Study of the Great Depression in the United States (1937):

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