Irving Fisher - Booms & Depressions: First Principles Revisited

This 1932 book is Fisher"s most thorough description of his cash flow analysis of economic cycles. Classical economics, neoclassical economics and the Austrian school of economics all treat money as a commodity that is traded along with all other commodities as an economically neutral "medium of exchange". Fisher sees that this explanation only applies to a barter economy and these theories are incapable of adequately explaining the business cycle in a "money economy", especially the booms and depressions. It is changes in the quantity and distribution of the money supply that drive business cycles, not economic factors. A more concise version of Fisher"s thinking along with his recommended solution is found in "100% Money and the Public Debt", his last booklet, published 1936. A recent update of this view, though with less radical and less permanent prescriptions for solving the depression problem, is Richard Koo"s, "The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics" which is a post-2008 meltdown...