Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the gold standard, for example, contributed in some ways to The Great Depression Most people don’t realize this. A great book on the topic is Lords of Finance which outlines how the gold standard made the Great Depression truly great. Even during covid, I don’t think people realize just how fundamentally important Fed actions were to basic things like keeping food on grocery store shelves.
There is plenty of blame to throw around during interventionist policies during the Great Depression. Take a look at Wickard v Filburn: > An Ohio farmer, Roscoe Filburn, was growing wheat to feed animals on his own farm. The US government had established limits on wheat production, based on the acreage owned by a farmer, to stabilize wheat prices and supplies. Filburn grew more than was permitted and so was ordered t…
The wheat limits already assumed that farmers would feed their own animals first and then sell the remainder on the open market. The goal was to prevent the price of wheat from dropping too low by limiting the amount available for non-feed purposes. However, by doing the opposite, selling up to the limit and then growing "extra" to feed his own animals, Filburn was deliberately contravening the wheat restrictions. If he had succeeded in challenging the law, everyone would have done the same, the supply of wheat would have skyrocketed, and the price of wheat would have dropped through the floor, financially ruining Filburn and thousands of other farmers.
The wheat restrictions worked for the purpose they were intended: they eliminated the swings in wheat prices during a time of economic crisis, allowing the price (and the market) to stabilize. It worked so well that the these restrictions were included in successor laws and are still part of U.S. agricultural law today.