In particular, although the Fed provided substantial liquidity to the financial system following the 1929 stock market crash, its response to the subsequent banking panics was limited at best; the widespread bank failures and the collapse in money and credit that ensued were major sources of the economic downturn.12 Bagehot’s dictum to lend freely at a penalty rate in the face of panic appeared to have few adherents at the Federal Reserve of that era.13 Economists have also identified a number of instances from the late 1920s to the early 1930s when Federal Reserve officials, in the face of the sharp economic contraction and financial upheaval, either tightened monetary policy or chose inaction.
Some historians trace these policy mistakes to the early death of Benjamin Strong, governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in 1928, which left the decentralized system without an effective leader.14 Whether valid or not, this hypothesis raises the interesting question of what intellectual framework an effective leader would have drawn on at the time to develop and justify a more activist monetary policy.