The Great Depression is "the most severe and protracted economic crisis in American History". Going through the Great Depression had changed the way the economy thinks now. No one can completely agree on what caused it. However, it's not unlikely for people to blame World War I when they go to study it further. Historians start there because of all the countries that were involved in the war and the conflicts that were created during that time period also. During the war United States was loaning money to Europe and eventually became their "creditor".
The event that happened that affected people more than anything was the stock mark crash on Wall Street. They were having declines in production for three months, which led to fear, which eventually led to the final crash. Some people believed that it was caused from "weakness in capitalism". Once World War II happened other people saw that theory as ridiculous and "exaggerated". It was said that it was a policy problem instead of mistakes in capitalism. The government had thought they made policies stronger, but in the economy today they might be proven wrong, if the stock market crashes for the second time in history.
There are many similarites to our time period now and what had happened in 1929. Many people are losing jobs just as what had happened when the Great Depression was beginning. When the stock market crashed it wiped out 40 percent of the value of paper money. By the time 1932 came around about one out of four people did not have jobs. The income employees were recieving dropped about $300, if they weren't already thrown out of their jobs all together. Markets were producing goods that were not being purchased because people did not have any money. The markets were beginning to flood with expired goods and the workers did not have anything to do. It led the workers to be layed off and the factories were shutting down leaving many people without jobs.
The population became very insecure of themselves and the future ahead them. Because of this, few people were getting married and much fewer babies were being born. This time era caused for a decline of six million babies to be born a year! Some people argue that the Great Depression had absolutly nothing to do with the decrease of the birthrate. However, the statistics that have been proven to be correct have no other reasonable explantion.
People were becoming extremely upset with their own government. Especially in Germany and Italy, because they were making about half of what English and French men were making. During the Great Depression over 9,000 banks had failed because people were not repaying their loans. They were unable to pay their loans because of all the other disasters that were happening in the economy and effecting the population extremely.
Like it says at the beginning of the page no one is sure of the causes of the Great Depression. All people know for sure is that it was an extremely harsh time in history and that the people who lived through it are scarred for life from it. The economy may have learned from it and grown somewhat stronger, but since the wealth in the economy is continuing to be distributed unevenly in the United States something like the depression, maybe not as severe, could possibly happen again in our time era.
