by Thomas DiLorenzo
LewRockwell.com
In his great classic, Crisis and Leviathan, Robert Higgs explained how Franklin Roosevelt’s attacks on the gold standard ushered in “the age of inflation” that has now robbed generations of Americans through the inflation tax. The explanation begins with the goofy economic theory that was the basis for the first New Deal: The backwards belief that low prices caused the Great Depression; therefore, if government could force prices up by restricting production the Depression would end. Think about that: The government’s policy was to reduce production, which of course would increase unemployment to supposedly end the extreme unemployment of the Great Depression! The reality was that the Depression caused the lower prices, not the other way around. FDR’s “brain trust” got it all backwards.