James Grant’s The Forgotten Depression (2014) is a splendid account of an important period in U.S. economic history — the sharp but brief “depression” of 1921 — that is easily overshadowed by the Great Depression a few years later. It seemed to be, as Grant’s subtitle says: “The crash that cured itself.” This stands in contrast with the Great Depression, which remained uncured throughout the 1930’s even after enormous government intervention; or our own experience, milder but equally prolonged, since 2008.
I group it with Lawrence Kudlow and Brian Domitrovic’s JFK and the Reagan Revolution (2016) as an example of a new sort of hybrid – a readable history book by economic sophisticates. As the publisher of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, Grant has spent the last few decades immersed in a discussion of markets and economies with some of the most sophisticated investors on Earth. Larry Kudlow brought similar expertise to JFK, with similarly superb results. Books by historians tend to become compilations of newspaper headlines, spiced with individual anecdotes; books by academics tend to be unreadable, and for those that persist nevertheless, compromised by fallacy and dogma born of academic isolation. Although Grant’s book is brief, enjoyable, and beautifully written, he cites the help of four research assistants, plus three other research contributors.
Current Prices on popular forms of Silver Bullion
World War I caused a U.S. economic boom powered by European wartime demand and U.S. government military spending. In addition, the newly-created Federal Reserve was engaging in aggressive money-creation to allow huge U.S. deficits to be financed at attractive rates. A gold embargo in 1917 effectively suspended the gold standard and allowed…