All he had was a hammer and went looking for a nail

So Friedman argued for using monetary policy rather than fiscal policy to counteract recessions. His prime example was the Great Depression, which he saw as primarily a failure of the Federal Reserve. By the time the Depression hit, Friedman contended, the Fed had allowed the money supply to shrink by about a third, which brought on a deflation that caused the price level to drop by about 25 percent. Deflation stifles economic activity because it raises real interest rates and wages, increases the burden of debt, and forces producers to sell commodities for less than the cost of production, among other things.

The proper theory of banking is that monetarism does not work.  The pt boss can do not better then to match loans to deposits.  

This fact is well proven at this point by just looking at that mammoth 200 billion dollar Fed tax we are facing, a deflationary nightmare. 

Bur Bruce Bartlett is way out of his league:

But Friedman’s account glossed over why the money collapsed. When banks failed in those days, their deposits simply disappeared: There was no deposit insurance, and the bulk of the money supply consisted of bank deposits, not cash. The Fed lacked the legal authority to buy banks and keep them solvent, which is the only thing that would have helped. (Needless to say, Friedman would also have opposed nationalization of the banks on libertarian grounds.) The Fed was also constrained by the gold standard, which many foolish right-wingers still advocate.

The great depression was a technology shock, pure and simple and well proven.  The cause was Hoover, agglomerating the broadcast spectrum causing huge mismatches between trade space and infrastructure. As a result the roads jammed almost overnight in every city of America.

Bruce will not understand this issue and most economists get it wrong.  The proper thing to do is listen to mathematicians and technologists, ignore the economic pundits. We knew the answer ten years ago. We can identify the meeting place and the date when this happened.