Del blog The Austrian Economists, post de Steve Horwitz, enlazando a una cita de Hayek en una entrevista de 1979 en el blog Taking Hayek Seriously de Greg Ransom.

Hayek dijo en una entrevista de 1979:

“I agree with Milton Friedman that once the Crash had occurred, the Federal Reserve System pursued a silly deflationary policy.  I am not only against inflation but I am also against deflation.  So, once again, a badly programmed monetary policy prolonged the depression.”

El resto de la entrada de Horwitz también merece la pena.

Those Austrians who think deflation is always and everywhere a good phenomenon strongly overlap with those Austrians who wonder whether Hayek is really an Austrian (or a even a classical liberal) anyway, so I’m doubtful this will convince them of the claim that a concern with monetary deflation has been, and should be, a core part of Austrian monetary and macro theory

Personalmente, en alguna cosa que he leído de algún austriaco, me llamaba la atención la defensa casi a ultranza de la deflación. No sé si será para dar el contrapunto a la visión de Bernanke y cia. Que la deflación sea inevitable tras un proceso inflacionario como cura de las malas inversiones no quiere decir que no tenga altos costes, y que no pueda desembocar en una “contracción secundaria”.

It is also useful to counter the claim that Hayek was a “liquidationist” in the sense often deployed by people like Brad DeLong, as well as the more general claim that Hayek thought we should do nothing during the depression.  By implication, if you think deflation is bad, you believe that the Fed (given its existence) should have behaved differently between 1930 and 33.  It could have done something to prevent the events that “prolonged the depression.”

This also is some support for what I would call the Austrian-Monetarist-Interventionism explanation of why the Great Depression got started, got so deep so quickly, and lasted so long.  Each “school” (think Rothbard, F&S, and Higgs if you want authors) lines up with each element of the explanation in the order given.  Even Hayek agrees that traditional Austrian cycle theory alone can’t explain the whole thing, even buttressed by Higgs or Cole & Ohanian.  If you want to explain why the Great Depression was both “great” and a “depression” not a recession, you need the Friedman and Schwartz story, and you’ll have Hayek on your side.

No sé hasta qué punto debería incorporarse la tesis de Friedman en el estudio de la Gran Depresión. Ver Contra Milton Friedman. Ahora bien, en un ambiente de banca central, es extremadamente difícil, sino imposible, saber qué política monetaria (en detalle, en concreto) llevar a cabo en cada momento, por falta de conocimiento, etc. etc. y también complicado es que esa política vaya a tener los efectos deseados (sin imprevistos) en el momento deseado (sin retrasos).

En relación a este tema escribieron recientemente Adrián Ravier y Rallo en LD.

Ver también: http://amartinoro.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/sobre-la-gran-depresion/