Great Depression And Its Causes

Due to the imbalance of the wealth, the economy became very unstable. The stock market crashed because of the excessive speculation in the 1920’s, which made the stock market artificially high (Galbraith 175). The poor distribution of the wealth, excessive speculation, and the stock market crashes caused the U.S. economy to fail, signaling the start of the Great Depression. The 1920’s were a time when the American people and the economy were thriving. This period of time was called the “Roaring Twenties”.

1 - Compose an essay which summarizes the root causes of the Great Depression. Then compare and contrast how Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt went about dealing with the worst economic depression in American history. What fundamental economic principles were each influenced by and cite examples of their policies. The Great Depression was quick and detrimental to the U.S. market. With the banks making loans to people to invest in stocks, when the stocks started to crash there was a large amount of panic selling causing a great many numbers of businesses that when bankrupt.

Major businesses increased profits through most of the decade while wages remained low and workers were unable to buy the goods they had helped to produce. The financial and banking systems were very unregulated and a number of banks had failed during the 1920s. The construction and automotive industries, whose booming business had been made possible by the prosperity earlier in the decade, slowed. Declining sales resulted in higher rates of unemployment. America was witnessing a breakdown of the Democratic and free enterprise system as the US fell into the worst depression in history.

The Causes of the Great Depression Adam Fenster Mr. Banker March 6, 2014 Modern World There were many contributions to the cause of the Great Depression, but the three most prominent catalysts were the crash of the New York Stock Exchange, the excessive spending by Americans in the 1920s as well as the bad shape the economy was in, and the false belief that the post-war economic boom would last. As we look back now from our future perspective, we can analyze exactly what went wrong, and how to prevent events like this from happening in the future. The New York Stock Exchange crash sent Americans into panic and made most people lose trust in stocks. Americans were spending too much and investments were put in too deep. As a result, America could no longer keep up the funding of war relief efforts in Europe.

Some of the main causes of the great depression were that there was overproduction of food and also industrial parts, banks gave out too many loans and at the end people could not pay them, and also the stock market crash of 1929. Farmers in the western world produced more food than Americans needed. Farmers then couldn’t sell the food and then lost their farms. Industrial workers produced too many things. Workers couldn’t buy goods.

In a five time span Americans salary did not equal to their contributing. On the other hand, the Americans were squandering more than what they made financially. Because the America people were concise on cash and credit they stop investing money in the economy. Under those circumstances real estates became stagnant; additionally, working people were laid off due to less productive in the manufacturing plants (p.692). Although the stocks rise 40 percent between 1928 and 1929 lenders succumbed to paroxysm behavior.

Once Recession ended the GNP went up 7.9 percent in 1939. (Www.english.uiuc.edu) tells us that besides ruining many thousands of individual investors, this precipitous decline in the value of assets greatly strained banks and other financial institutions, particularly those holding stocks in their portfolios. Many banks were consequently forced into insolvency; by 1933, 11,000 of the United States' 25,000 banks had failed. The failure of so many banks, combined with a general and nationwide loss of confidence in the economy, led to much-reduced levels of spending and demand and hence of production, thus aggravating the downward spiral. “The result was drastically falling output and drastically rising unemployment; ... ... middle of paper ... ...its were contracting it; The Fed's inaction was the reason why the initial recession turned into a prolonged depression; The economy continually sank throughout Hoover's entire term.

The crash spelled disaster for the national economy. Corporations with heavy investments faced a sudden shock to their assets. This was the beginning of the depression. The national income slipped lower each year from 1929-1932, and it did not return until World War II. Unemployment became the most important problem of the depression to the people living in the US.

The stock market crash had a colossal contribution to the Great Depression. The stock market crash rolled in after the golden time in the 1920’s; with it came the Great Depression trailing right behind. The stock market crash was caused by people investing in stocks with money they did not have, this was called buying on margin. When the stocks fell everyone lost an enormous amount of money that they had invested into the stocks. The stock market was the main cause that forced American into the Great Depression.

It was not only one or two parts of society which were affected, but mostly every social class. At the time the stock market crashed, Germany was just developing its economy, since Germany lost most of their industry to the Allies in the Treaty of Versailles. The Great Depression in 1929 was a huge contribution for Hitler’s rise to power. As most people lost their jobs and the unemployment increased disastrous, the German inhabitants did no longer believe in the Weimar Republic. Money was not valuable anymore and many Germans suffered from poverty and illness.