[Freedom4US]

The government didn’t close the banks per se, the banks were doing a fine job of that on their own, for several years. What Roosevelt did was close all the (few) remaining banks, calling it a “bank holiday”.

[LowCountryJoe]

Friedman’s answer to this was that the Fed should have, in essence, told the people, “You want your cash? Come and get it!” while injecting massive liquidation into the system to react to the want of the people. It would have been in this manner that those who panicked would have suffered the most through an erosion of purchasing power. And those who left their deposits in the bank would have received a rate bump for their wisdom. When the people felt what was happening to the dollar, the banking runs would have come to a halt that much faster and VOLUNTARILY!