Anna Schwartz

“Anna did all of the work, and I got most of the recognition,” economist Milton Friedman said about Anna Schwartz when he accepted his 1976 Nobel Prize. Schwartz, who died June 21 at 96, was a crucial partner in Friedman’s formulation of monetarism, the theory that the inflation rate and pace of the economy are largely determined by the size of the money supply. Together they produced the classic 1963 work A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960, which argues that misguided Federal Reserve policies caused the Great Depression. While current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke considered Schwartz an inspiration, she did not always feel the same about him. Critical of the Fed’s bailouts of insolvent banks, she said, “Firms that made wrong decisions should fail. The market works better when wrong decisions are punished and good decisions make you rich.”