num_pages: 528
description: Economic historians have made great progress in unraveling the causes of the Great Depression but not until Scott Sumner came along has anyone explained the multitude of twists and turns the economy took. In The Midas Financial Markets Government Policy Shocks and the Great Depression  Sumner offers his magnum opusthe first book to comprehensively explain both monetary and non-monetary causes of that cataclysm. Drawing on financial market data and contemporaneous news stories Sumner shows that the Great Depression is ultimately a story of incredibly bad policymakingby central bankers legislators and two presidentsespecially mistakes related to monetary policy and wage rates. He also shows that macroeconomic thought has long been captive to a false narrative that continues to misguide policymakers in their quixotic quest to promote robust and sustainable economic growth. The Midas Paradox is a landmark treatise that solves mysteries that have long perplexed economic historians and corrects misconceptions about the true causes consequences and cures of macroeconomic instability. Like Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartzs A Monetary History of the United States 18671960  it is one of those rare books destined to shape all future research on the subject.
language: English
title: The Midas Paradox: Financial Markets, Government Policy Shocks, and the Great Depression
publisher: Independent Institute