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Explain the causes of great depression
Explain the causes of great depression
The great depression world wide economic questions
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Learning from the Great Depression Over the course of history, America has dealt with its share of economic troubles. One of America’s darkest moments, economically, came in the year of 1929. On October 29th, 1929 America’s stock market crashed. This would become what we now know as the Great Depression. The Great Depression lasted approximately ten years. The Great Depression affected the entire country. Seven decades later we experienced what is known as the Great Recession. This also affected many Americans economically. Both of these economic meltdowns share commonalities. The Great Depression caused a massive decline in consumer spending, as well as a sharp decline in industrial production. With this decline in industrial production, products began to pile up and were left unsold. With the decline in production, people were laid off simply because there was not a need to produce any more goods. Stock prices were unstable and eventually led to over sixteen million shares that would be traded. These sixteen million shares were traded in the midst of another meltdown. Five days later, almost thirteen million more shares were traded away. Almost twenty nine million worthless shares were traded in. Another cause to the Great Depression was this newly invented idea of buying on margin, otherwise known as buying on credit. Banks were lending massive amounts of money to people who could not pay the money back. This eventually caused the banks to run out of money and simply fail. Many Americans that bought on credit were forced into foreclosures and repossessions. By 1932, almost 6 million Americans were unemployed and having a hard time finding work. The local soup kitchens and shelters saw astronomical numbers at the time, which a... ... middle of paper ... ...x." Government Policies and the Collapse in Trade during the Great Depression. Vox EU, 27 Nov. 2009. Web. 24 Apr. 2014. Libecap, Gary D. "The Great Depression and the Regulating State: Federal Government Regulation of Agriculture: 1884-1970." NBER. The University of Chicago Press,, n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2014. Graham, John R., Sonali Hazarika, and Krishnamoorthy Narasimhan. "Corporate Governance, Debt, and Investment Policy during the Great Depression." NBER. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2011. Web. 24 Apr. 2014. "The Great Recession." State of Working America. Economic Policy Institute, n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2014. "Unemployment and Underemployment." State of Working America. Economic Policy Institute, n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2014. History.com Staff. "The Great Depression." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2009. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.
The stock market crash of 1929 was one of the main causes of the Great Depression. Before the stock market crash, many people bought on margin, which caused the stock market to become very unbalanced, which led to the crash. Many people had invested heavily in the stock market during the 1920’s. All of these people who invested in the stock market lost all the money they had, since they relied on the stock market so much. The stock market crash also played a more physiological role in causing the Great Depression.
Levine, Linda. “The Labor Market During the Great Depression and the Current Recession”. 19 June 2009. 6 March 2010. < http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/R40655_20090619.pdf>.
The Great Depression was the biggest and longest lasting economic crisis in U.S history. The Great depression hit the united states on October 29, 1929 When the stock market crashed. During 1929, everyone was putting in mass amounts of their income into the stock market. For every ten dollars made, Four dollars was invested into the stock market, thats forty percent of the individual's income (American Experience).
The longest-lasting economic downfall in the history of the United States was the Great Depression. The Great Depression generated close after the stock market crash. The stock market crash presented itself on October 1929. The stock market crash pushed Wall Street into hectic terror which eradicated millions of investors. Since the crash of the stock market, over the next numerous years, consumer spending and investment dropped. In consideration of consumer spending and investment dropping it caused steep declines in industrial manufacturing and rising levels of unemployment. Rising unemployment was caused by companies that were failing and laying off workers. When the Great Depression reached its all-time low, before 1933, some thirteen to
Pindar, Ian. "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes." The Guardian, August 9, 2009.
"America's Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal."DPLA. Digital Public Library of America. Web. 20 Nov 2013. .
The Great Depression America 1929-1941 by Robert S. McElvaine covers many topics of American history during the "Great Depression" through 1941. The topic that I have selected to compare to the text of American, Past and Present, written by Robert A. Divine, T.H. Breen, George M. Frederickson and R. Hal Williams, is Herbert Hoover, the thirty-first president of the United States and America's president during the horrible "Great Depression".
The Great Depression was the worst period in the history of America’s economy. There is no way to overstate how tough this time was for the average worker and there was a feeling of desperation that hung over the entire country. Current political wisdom leading up to the Great Depression had been that the federal government does not get involved in business or the economy under any circumstances. Three Presidents in a row; Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, all were cut from the same cloth of enacting pro-business policies to generate a powerful economy. Because the economy was doing so well during the “Roaring 20s”, there wasn’t much of a dispute
zShmoop Editorial Team. "Politics in The Great Depression." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
25 billion dollars lost in 1 day, roughly 25% of the nations population was without a job, and the suicide rate skyrocketed. These are just a few factors that turned the Stock Market Crash of 1929 into the Great Depression, one of the longest and worst economic downturns of that time, according to History.com. 16 million shares were lost at the New York Stock Exchange, eliminating thousands of investors on October 29th, 1929. The Stock Market Crash impacted the United States by putting Millions of people out of jobs, and putting America in one of the deepest financial and economical holes of that time. Today, Americans are still worried it could happen again, which is causing some people to not trust banks, or invest in the stock market. If the stock market were to crash today very few Americans would be prepared.
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution early in the nineteenth century the United States ad experienced recessions or panics at least every twenty years. But none was as severe or lasted as long as the Great Depression. Only as the economy shifted toward a war mobilization in the late 1930s did the grip of the depression finally ease.
The Stock Market was being abused for years. Long term wise, people who used the stock market began to use credit to buy their stocks, borrowing from banks, and were unable to pay back their loans. The Government during this time used a policy of Laissez Faire, the consolidation of corporation was not challenged, favoring the wealthy (FEARON, PETER).
October 29th, 1929 marked the beginning of the Great Depression, a depression that forever changed the United States of America. The Stock Market collapse was unavoidable considering the lavish life style of the 1920’s. Some of the ominous signs leading up to the crash was that there was a high unemployment rate, automobile sales were down, and many farms were failing. Consumerism played a key role in the Stock Market Crash of 1929 because Americans speculated on the stocks hoping they would grow in their favor. They would invest in these stocks at a low rate which gave them a false sense of wealth causing them to invest in even more stocks at the same low rate. When they purchased these stocks at this low rate they never made enough money to pay it all back, therefore contributing to the crash of 1929. Also contributing to the crash was the over production of consumer goods. When companies began to mass produce goods they did not not need as many workers so they fired them. Even though there was an abundance of goods mass produced and at a cheap price because of that, so many people now had no jobs so the goods were not being purchased. Even though, from 1920 to 1929, consumerism and overproduction partially caused the Great Depression, the unequal distribution of wealth and income was the most significant catalyst.
The US government’s role in the Great Depression has been very controversy. Different hypothesizes argued differently on the causes of the Great depression and whether the New Deal introduced by the government and President Roosevelt helped United States got out of the depression. I would argue that even though not the only factor, the US government did lead the country into the Great Depression and the New Deal actually delayed the recovery process. I will discuss five different factors (stock market crash, bank failure, tariff and tax cut, consumer spending and agriculture) that are commonly accepted to cause the depression and how the government linked to them. Furthermore, I will try to show how the government prolonged the depression in the United States by introducing the New Deal.
The Great Depression was the deepest and longest-lasting economic downfall in the history of the United States. No event has yet to rival The Great Depression to the present day, although we have had recessions in the past, and some economic panics, fears. Thankfully, the United States of America has had its share of experiences from the foundation of this country and throughout its growth, many economic crises have occurred. In the United States, the Great Depression began soon after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors ("The Great Depression."). In turn, from this single tragic event, numerous amounts of chain reactions occurred.