There Is No Means Of Avoiding

From Human Action (1949), in Mises's discussion of the trade cycle. Mises was articulating the Austrian Business Cycle Theory, which he had first developed with Friedrich Hayek: credit expansion by banks drives an unsustainable boom by creating artificial demand for long-term investment projects; when credit contracts, the boom collapses. He used this framework to analyze the Great Depression and to argue against policies of deliberate credit expansion.