Can Ben Bernanke stop the credit crunch?

While Ben Bernanke tries to follow Milton Friedman's ideas on injecting liquidity, he risks destroying not only his own reputation, but the US economy as well, says William L. Anderson.

I recently heard a radio interview with a prominent economist who was defending Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's moves to shore up the markets on Wall Street. Bernanke, the economist said with emphasis, had spent years studying the 'mistakes' of the Fed during the Great Depression and was not going to repeat the 'errors' that the Fed directors committed from 1930 to 1933.

The 'errors' of which the economist spoke were outlined by the late Milton Friedman both in his 1963 A Monetary History of the United States (written with Anna Schwartz) and his popular Free to Choose (with Rose Friedman), published in 1979.

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