Golden Fetters

Golden Fetters provides a new analysis of the Depression, one which explores the connections between the gold standard--the framework regulating international monetary affairs until 1931--and the global economic crisis. It shows how economic policies, in conjunction with the imbalances created by World War I, gave rise to the global crisis of the 1930s. Its central argument is that the gold standard fundamentally constrained the policies that were pursued and that it was largely responsible for creating the unstable economic environment on which they acted.