“The Fed was largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe. Instead of using its powers to offset the depression, it presided over a decline in the quantity of money by one-third from 1929 to 1933 … Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government.”

– Milton Friedman
(1912-2006) Nobel Prize-winning economist, economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan, “ultimate guru of the free-market system”
Source: Two Lucky People, 233