There are a few things very few people seem to know. There are others they all seem to think they know. Which is which?
One of the above is that the gold standard was not the real cause of the great depression, as Bernanke asserted in the quote.
This is a fact that even he admitted, in the same quote: "Effective international cooperation could in principle have permitted a worldwide monetary expansion despite gold standard constraints...."
If what he had already said were true, then how? Was it the cause or not? Which time was he not telling the truth, the first or the second?
Another almost unknown fact, it seems, is that even the gold standard was never really what it was always claimed to be. There are a lot of historical reasons for that. There were runs on banks, under the gold standard, long before the West went to paper so called fiat currency. Just take my word for it.
It is called fractional-reserve or fractional reserve banking. It has been ubiquitous since the beginning of banking really. This is a problem which the gold standard was not designed to solve. It is a problem whether you hold physical gold, or thin air, as reserves. In fact, in practice, it was a problem which the gold standard developed in part to conceal.
Another great perennial myth that everyone seems to think they know is that Hoot Smalley, and tariff war, caused the Great Depression.
One point about this is that, if it were true, then Bernanke's ostensible cause, the gold standard, would automatically be false. It cannot be both because he said it was the gold standard, and not another thing.
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