really him started as a political figure is this 800 page book of economic that he coauthored with anna schwartz called the monetary history of the united states. and in this they tell a story of 150 years of american history due lens of money, how much money there in the economy, which sounds kind of dry but then what they do in their most famous chapter, which was called the great contraction, is they go back and they examine the great depression. and you have to imagine this book comes out in the early 1960s. it's not that far away in time. people are still around who have lived through the great depression, say 30 years before or less so. friedman and schwartz argue that the reason the great depression was so bad and lasted long was because the united states lost a third of the money in circulation due to the banking crisis. and then they go on to argue that federal reserve system, which was supposed act as a lender of last resort, had not done its job and had therefore let this crisis, the banking sector, spread throughout the whole economy and create decades misery. now, why this is import