Grant wins Hayek Prize for “The Forgotten Depression”

James Grant

Jim Grant, the founder of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, has been named the winner of the 2015 Hayek Book Prize for his book “The Forgotten Depression: 1921: The Crash that Cured Itself” (Simon & Schuster).

Grant will receive a $50,000 award and will deliver the annual Hayek lecture in New York in June.

Amity Shlaes, who chairs the jury for the prize, said, “At a time when the automatic response of governments to a recession is to intervene, Grant reminds us that the opposite response, no intervention, has also worked.”

The prize is given annually by the Manhattan Institute.

Grant founded Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, a twice-monthly journal of the financial markets, in 1983, two years after interest rates recorded their modern-day highs. He previously worked for Barron’s and for the Baltimore Sun.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.