Anna Schwartz died aged 96 last week. Often called the “high priestess of monetarism” she co-authored the classic A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 with Milton Friedman in 1963. Mrs. Schwartz joined the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York in 1941 and continued to work there for more than 70 years. She leaves a lasting legacy.
If you investigate individually the manias that the market has so dubbed over the years, in every case, it was expansive monetary policy that generated the boom in an asset. The particular asset varied from one boom to another. But the basic underlying propagator was too-easy monetary policy and too-low interest rates …..
~ Anna Schwartz, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal, October 2008.