confidence following the Wall Street Crash of 1929 was a primary cause of the Great Depression. The Monetary History was lauded as one of the most influential economics books of the twentieth century by the Cato Institute book forum in 2003. It was also cited with approval in a 2002 speech by then-Federal Reserve board member Ben Bernanke stating "the direct and indirect influences of the Monetary History on contemporary monetary economics would be difficult to overstate", and again in a 2004 speech as "transform[ing] the debate about the Great Depression". The Depression-related chapter of A Monetary History was titled "The Great Contraction" and was republished as a separate book in 1965. Some editions include an appendix in which the authors got an endorsement from an unlikely source at an event in their honor when Ben Bernanke made this statement: Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression, you're right. We did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again. Monetarist economists used the work of Friedman and Schwartz to justify their positions for using monetary policy as the critical economic stabilizer. This view became more popular as Keynesian stabilizers failed to ameliorate the stagflation of the 1970s and political winds shifted away from government intervention in the market into the 1980s and 1990s. During this period, the Federal Reserve was recognized as a critical player in setting interest rates to counter excessive inflation and also to prevent deflation that could lead to real economic distress. Criticism The book lays most of the blame for the Great Depression upon the Federal Reserve, arguing that it did not do enough to prevent the Depression. Economists such as Peter Temin have raised questions about whether or not most monetary quantity levels were endogenous rather than exogenously determined, as A Monetary History argues, especially during the Depression. Paul Krugman has argued that the 2008 financial crisis has shown that, during a financial crisis, central banks cannot control broad money, and that money supply bears little relationship to GDP. According to Krugman, the same was true in the 1930s, and the claim that the Federal Reserve could have prevented the Great Depression is highly dubious. Economic historian Barry Eichengreen, in The Golden Fetters, has argued that