The Great Depression

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The Great Depression
When a person hears the words “The Great Depression,” almost everyone thinks of the worst economic times in the United States. The Great Depression started in the late 1920s and continued on until the early 1940s. It is known as being “the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the western industrialized world” (History.com). We can learn from the occurrences during The Great Depression that government involvement is the deciding factor of whether an economy will expand or continue to shrink during a recession.
The 1920’s, also known as the Roaring Twenties, were fantastic times for the economy. People were buying extravagant things such as automobiles, and investing in the stock market in order to make big money. Many of the new, expensive things that people purchased were bought on credit. People even bought stocks “on margin,” which means with borrowed money. All this extravagance would soon disappear and everything people bought on credit or margin would soon come back to haunt them.
October 29, 1929, what would later be known as “Black Tuesday,” was the day that the stock market crashed and The Great Depression started. The stock market prices had continually gone up and up to a point where there was no possible way that businesses were going to make that much in their future earnings. Investors began to sell their stocks in large quantities. Around 16 million shares were sold just on “Black Tuesday”. Because of this, millions of shares ended up becoming worthless. Those investors who had bought their stocks on margin ended up becoming completely wiped out because of this day. Personal investors were not the only people to invest in the stock market; banks also did. Banks inve...

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...yees. In the case of The Great Depression, there was a demand for production because World War II started.

Works Cited

"The Great Depression." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 1 Nov. 2013.
"Timeline of The Great Depression." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 1 Nov. 2013.
Smiley,Gene. "Great Depression." The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. 2008. Library of Economics and Liberty. Web. 2 November 2013. .
Nelson, Cary. "About the Great Depression." Modern American Poetry. Modern American Poetry Site. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Nov. 2013.
Rosenberg, Jennifer. "The Great Depression." About.com 20th Century History. About.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Nov. 2013.
Taylor, Nick. “A Short History of The Great Depression.” Times Topics. New York Times. N.P., n.d. Web. 4 Nov. 2013
“The Great Depression.” History.com. History.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2013

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