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About this quote

What does it mean?
Severe depressions always coincide with sharp drops in the money supply.
In plain terms
When money supply drops, the economy usually suffers deeply.
What can you take from it?
Money supply changes signal economic trouble.

Where it applies

  • economic analysis
  • crisis prevention
  • monetary policy

Putting it to work

  • monitor money supply
  • watch liquidity
  • prepare for downturns

Questions to consider

  • Is money supply the cause or effect?
  • What else changes?

Another view

Correlation does not always prove causation.

More from Milton Friedman

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  2. The Federal Reserve definitely caused the Great Depression by contracting the amount of money in circulation by one-third from 1929 to 1933

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  3. A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.

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