Financial Crises and Monetary Policy Interventions in the View of the Austrian School

In our attempt to understand the causes and consequences of the most critical international financial crisis of the 21st century which, besides crushing world economies, questioned the bases of the mainstream economic theories, we focused our attention on the solutions provided by the Austrian School’s representatives (in doing that we have nevertheless tried to avoid prejudices). According to them, the reckless policy of artificial credit expansion promoted by the monetary authorities represents the major cause of the economic and financial crises as well as of recurrent recessions. Our study aims to provide an enumeration (of course, not an exhaustive one) of the causes of the financial crises, from the Austrian School perspective, but also draws attention to the inevitable political and social consequences of the interventionist policy in the economy, in general, and in the banking system, in particular.