ABSTRACT
The Federal Reserve System (Fed) has been widely criticized for its response (or lack of response) to the economic and financial problems of the period 1928-1933. This period, as is well known, was one of frantic speculation, followed by the collapse of the stock market, the banking system, and the economy at large, and ending in the declaration of a national banking holiday by President Franklin Roosevelt. It is not difficult to understand why Federal Reserve behavior has been the subject of many scholarly investigations. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The approach followed in the present investigation is the formulation of hypotheses regarding Federal Reserve behavior in the period 1923-1931, based on original and secondary sources, followed by statistical testing of the hypotheses.
