Austrian School economists view the nationwide recession resulting from the Panic of 1819 as the first failure of expansionary monetary policy. This theory was first expounded by Murray N. Rothbard, in his doctoral dissertation, The Panic of 1819, published in 1962. For many years, this was the only book on the subject. This explanation was based on the Austrian theory of the business cycle. The US Government borrowed heavily to finance the War of 1812, causing tremendous strain on the banks' reserves of specie, which led to a suspension of specie payments in 1814, and then again during the recession of 1819–1821, violating contractual rights of depositors. The suspension of the obligation to redeem greatly spurred the establishment of new banks and the expansion of banknote issues, and this inflation of money encouraged unsustainable investments to take place. It soon became clear that the monetary situation was threatening, and the Second Bank of the United States was forced to call a halt to its expansion and launch a painful process of contraction. There was a wave of bankruptcies, bank failures, and bank runs; prices dropped and wide-scale urban unemployment began. By 1819, land measures in the U.S. had also reached and many Americans did not have enough money to pay off their loans.