The Corporation and the Twentieth Century

47. The most important contemporary proponent of this view was Robbins (1934). For an intellectual history, see White (2012, chapter 3). Inflation as measured by the CPI was actually low in the 1920s. But proponents of the malinvestment theory point out that as happened in the late nineteenth century, an economy with rapidly growing productivity and a stable money supply ought to have been experiencing mild deflation. A stable price level in such circum- stances actually indicates an inflationary policy. In this theory, the downturn in 1929 was caused by a productivity shock as entrepreneurs realized that some of their investments were valueless (Vedder and Gallaway 1997, p. 89).

48. Friedman and Schwartz (1963, p. 298); Hamilton (1987); Meltzer (2003, pp. 253–57). Temin (2011; 1989, p. 7) places even Keynes in that camp, at least putting aside the small matter of Keynes’s fallacious belief that investment opportunities were diminishing, which would have constituted a real supply shock.

49. Chandler (1971, pp. 78–82).

50. Fishback (2010, p. 390).

51. Meltzer (2003, pp. 304–5).

52. Between the beginning of September 1929 and the end of April 1930, industrial produc-

tion had fallen 15 percent. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (US), Industrial Production: Total Index, FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, https://fred.stlouisfed.org /series/INDPRO (accessed August 19, 2022).

53. Cargill (1992, pp. 1275–76). Meyer, the father of Katharine Graham, would soon go on to become the owner-publisher of the Washington Post.

54. Cecchetti (1998, p. 184). As we have seen, the idea that interest rates have to be corrected for expectations about inflation or deflation is associated with Irving Fisher.

55. “The economies of the United States and much of the rest of the world became victims of the Federal Reserve’s adherence to an inappropriate theory [the real-bills doctrine] and the absence of basic economic understanding such as that developed by [Henry] Thornton and Fisher” (Meltzer 2003, p. 321). Fisher’s work was not entirely unknown at the Fed, and Fisher and Strong were well acquainted. In the 1920s Fisher testified in favor of a bill that would have required the Fed to maintain the price level. Unsurprisingly, Strong, who did not want the Fed bound by legislation, testified against it, rightly worrying that such legislation would be used by agricultural interests to force the Fed to prop up commodity prices (Fisher 1934, pp. 162–63). In general, officials at the Fed rejected any purely “academic” basis for policy, believing that the complexities of markets called for the on-the-ground skills of bankers responding to situations as they arose (Barber 1985, pp. 23–27).

56. Calomiris (2013, p. 208).

Notes to Chapter 6 601

57. Fisher (1933).

58. Bernanke (1983). See also Chandler (1970, p. 11). More generally, as Clower and Leijon- hufvud (1975, p. 187) put it, “sustained and serious coordination failures might occur because insolvency of trade specialists would temporarily eliminate from the economy market homeo- stats that are essential for effective coordination of the notional economic plans of individual agents.”

59. Ahamed (2009, pp. 3384–90); Chernow (1990, pp. 326–27); Friedman and Schwartz (1963, pp. 309–11); Meltzer (2003, pp. 323–25).

60. It may be suggestive of the atmosphere of the times that the hapless superintendent of banks who ordered the Bank of United States closed, one Joseph Broderick, was subsequently indicted for having failed to shut the bank down quickly enough. After two trials, he was acquitted.

61. Bordo and Wheelock (2013); Calomiris (2013).

62. Quoted in Kennedy (1999, p. 70). Wilson (1975, p. 163) attributes the quote White’s father.

63. Nash (1959).

64. Friedman and Schwartz (1963, p. 317).

65. Friedman and Schwartz (1963, p. 320).

66. Calomiris (2013, p. 217); Mason (2001).

67. Friedman and Schwartz (1963, p. 321); Meltzer (2003, pp. 357–58). The Senate sponsor

of the bill was none other than Carter Glass, and it was not lost on him that expanding “eligible” paper flew in the face of his beloved real-bills doctrine. This bill was also backed by Henry B. Steagall on the House side, but it is the Banking Act of 1933 (on which more below) that people nowadays mean when they refer to the Glass-Steagall Act.

68. Wilson (1975).

69. Hawley (1981a, p. 48).

70. Hawley (1981a, p. 48); Metcalf (1975, p. 69). This amounts to what the French after World

War II would call indicative planning.

71. Barber (1985, pp. 15–22).

72. Hawley (1981a, pp. 64–65); Leuchtenburg (2009, pp. 61–62).

73. Hoover (1952b, p. 42).

74. Holcombe (2002, p. 195).

75. Brownlee (2016, pp. 117–19).

76. Brown (1956); Chandler (1970, pp. 139–40); Fishback (2010).

77. Ford (1926, p. 9).

78. Filene (1923, p. 411).

79. Foster and Catchings (1928); Hobson (1930).

80. Taylor and Selgin (1999, p. 448).

81. New York Times, November 22, 1929, p. 1; Washington Post, November 22, 1929, p. 1.

82. Hoover (1952b, pp. 43–44).