Barry Eichengreen (born 1952)is an American economist who holds the title of George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1987. He has done research and published widely on the history and current operation of the international monetary and financial system. He received his Ph.D from Yale University in 1979. He was a senior policy advisor to the International Monetary Fund in 1997 and 1998, although he has since been somewhat critical of the IMF. 1952 (MCMLII) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... An economist is an individual who studies economics and writes about economic policy. ... The logo of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is the international organization entrusted with overseeing the global financial system by monitoring exchange rates and balance of payments, as well as offering technical and financial assistance when asked. ...
His best known work is the book Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939, Oxford University Press, 1992. In his own book on the Great Depression, Ben Bernanke summarized Eichengreen's thesis as follows: 'the proximate cause of the world depression was a structurally flawed and poorly managed international gold standard', 'For a variety of reasons, including among others a desire of the Federal Reserve to curb the US stock market boom, monetary policy in several major countries turned contractionary in the late 1920's - a contraction that was transmitted worldwide by the gold standard. What was initially a mild deflationary process began to snowball when the banking and currency crises of 1931 instigated an international "scramble for gold". Sterilization of gold inflows by surplus countries [the USA and France], substitution of gold for foreign exchange reserves, and runs on commercial banks all led to increases in the gold backing of money, and consequently to sharp unintended declines in national money supplies. Monetary contractions in turn were strongly associated with falling prices, output and employment. Effective international cooperation could in principle have permitted a [worldwide] monetary expansion despite gold standard constraints, but disputes over [World War I] reparations and war debts, and the insularity and inexperience of the Federal Reserve, among other factors, prevented this outcome. As a result, individual countries were able to escape the deflationary vortex only by unilaterally abandoning the gold standard and re-establishing domestic monetary stability, a process that dragged on in a halting and uncoordinated manner until France and the other Gold Bloc countries finally left gold in 1936'. The main evidence Eichengreen adduces in support of this view is the fact that countries that abandoned the gold standard earlier saw their economies recover more quickly. Ben Bernanke Ben Shalom Bernanke (born December 13, 1953) (pronounced ber-NAN-kee or bər-nan-kē), American macroeconomist, is the Chairman of the U.S. Presidents Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) and the nominee to succeed Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the... This article is on the monetary principle. ...
Professor BarryEichengreen of the Department of Economics describes the prospects for an American free trade agreement covering both North and South America, and both the monetary systemic prerequisites for such an agreement and the consequences of it.
Professor Eichengreen’s illuminating presentation warned of the futility of attempting in Latin America international monetary schemes that are doomed to failure such as exchange rate coordination systems or a common currency.
Professor Eichengreen argued that the European Union's experience in monetary unification is not truly applicable to the Americas, and that given the domestic political forces in the United States and other American countries, monetary union is unlikely.
Eichengreen thinks Temin fails to give an explanation of consumer spending, therefore his theory cannot be trusted.
Eichengreen argues the demand for gold by the U.S. and France would have contributed more to the global reserve severity than did liquidation of the gold exchange standard.
In the end, Eichengreen would conclude, in his own opinion, that the policies of the major central banks and the priority to preserve gold, must take the responsibility for the depth and severity of the Great Depression.
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