Outside of a fringe group of Austrians, economists essentially agree that having a flexible money supply is a good thing.
One of the first pieces of evidence is typically that those countries that left the gold standard earlier also recovered from the Great Depression earlier.
Good for whom? One can certainly see how it is good for the powers that be. You'd have a rather harder time financing non-stop invasions of faraway countries if you had to pay for it through overt taxation.
>>>One of the first pieces of evidence is typically that those countries that left the gold standard earlier also recovered from the Great Depression earlier.
By ramping up production for WWII.
Now I'm going to go orthogonal and mention something I've never seen addressed. Germany was economically a shambles. How did Hitler manage its economic comeback? Have any books been written on that subject?
Disclaimer: Germany in the period of '33 to '45 was not a capitalist society and aggregate measures of markets can be grossly misleading.
In the Great Depression the German chancellor Bruenning did try to keep a balanced budget, kept essentially a gold standard [1] and cut unemployment insurance. This resulted in 30% unemployment and a very high multiplier. Additionally Weimar Germany was on brink of civil war in the end.
Hitler then did introduce the Reichsarbeitsdienst, essentially forced but payed labor for the unemployed. And he did ramp up spending, first mostly for infrastructure later shifting to the military. [2] And he was rather reckless in consolidating his power, which probably lead to increased 'investor confidence.' With these policies he managed to get more than 5% real GDP growth each year, [3] together with steeply falling unemployment. [4] ( Wikipedia has an article with more details. [5])
And this is probably the reason why this is rarely addressed, economic policy was an area where Hitler did have some success, at least by modern metrics which are not easily applicable. ( And therefore it is actually quite hard to discuss without getting awkwardly close to not damning Hitler. In fact I am wondering at the moment, if this posting needs a stronger disclaimer.)
[1] The Rentenmark introduced after the hyperinflation of '23 was backed by land.
[2] The details are actually quite interesting, the regime was trying to hide a substantial part of the dept as 'Mefo bills.'
One of the first pieces of evidence is typically that those countries that left the gold standard earlier also recovered from the Great Depression earlier.