The Ayn Rand Institute’s op-ed, The Real Lesson of the Great Depression, opines that “The Great Depression does have something to teach us about the current crisis.” According to ARI, there were various causes of the Great Depression:

“Most people believe the Great Depression was caused by an ‘excessively’ free market–and they regard the massive expansion of government intervention under FDR as its cure. But as many economists have demonstrated, it was government intervention that caused and exacerbated the Depression–from the massive tariffs of Smoot-Hawley to a series of disastrous interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve to antibusiness measures such as the National Recovery Act.”

ARI properly calls for abolition of the Fed and advocates the gold standard. The implication that the Fed should not have raised interest ratest is troubling, however, since it implies that interest rates should have been pushed lower by the fed, i.e. the money supply inflated; that failure to inflate was a cause of the Great Depression. But was it? Not according to Rothbard. See Mateusz Machaj, Friedman for Government Intervention: The Case of the Great Depression.

(For more, see ARC’s Response to the Financial Crisis; see also these comments (1, 2) on another thread, regarding Objectivists Richard Salsman’s and Yaron Brook’s denigration of the idea of a 100% reserve gold standard [and pro fractional reserve banking views].)

Update: I’ve modified this post in response to criticism; readers can click the links and judge for themselves.