How Did The Great Depression Affect America

The Great Depression is possibly the worst economic recession in the past 100 years, and even American History. The Great depression occurred from 1929 to about 1940 after the crash of the stock market on October 29, 1929. The Depression was caused by multiple factors such as banking structure/failures, the monetary gap between the upper and lower class, American foreign policy, and the stock market crash of October 1929.

The factor that affected the “normal” working class Americans was the structure and failure of the banks. The banks mainly failed because of panic among the people and because of loans. People would rush to the banks to withdraw all their money. This mass withdrawing of money cut off the funds available to some. Since people

The rich were rich and getting richer while the poor were, inversely getting poorer. The economy at the time was dependent on luxury spending and stock investments from the rich. With demand lower than usual spending was, of course, lower. The poorer workers, in turn did not get a fair share of profit anymore. This just made the wage gap much bigger. According to Galbraith: “If they are to get rid of what they require it must be on luxuries or through investments in new plants and new productions.”The Depression did, of course affected the American people, but it also affected the American government and

The crash was caused by Investors pouring all their savings into stocks and paying for them with capital and not being able to pay for their loans. Later on, Investors were forced to sell their stocks, which lost them even more money when factoring in their loan payments. Galbraith’s thoughts on the matter were: “Enforced selling pushed prices down further” and “Investors didn’t have cash to pay for their stocks” These two ideas enforce the idea that Investors who put all their money in the Stock Market were partly responsible for the depression of the economy, and the American