The Tariff placed high taxes on imports leading to a decline in international trade. The United States held many loans with European countries that began to default. Reduction in international market spending in the US, coupled with the high tariffs placed on foreign countries led to unemployment abroad and foreign countries were forced to impose their own tariffs on other countries (Kelly, n.d.). The Great Depression was perhaps most devastating to the individual and family. The Depression was recorded to have decreased the marriage rate which helped lead to a decline in the birth rate.
The Great Depression was triggered by a sudden, total collapse in the stock market. This day, October 29, 1929, came to be known as Black Tuesday. There were many probable causes of this devastating time, such as massive bank failures, and the stock market crash. Others, such as economists, such as Peter Termin and Barry Eichengreen, believe the blame lies on Britain’s decision to return to the Gold Standard. According to many sources, recession cycles are a normal phenomenon.
The Great Depression lasted in America for at least ten years, but it took twenty-seven years to get the economy back above depression levels. To this day, the reasons that lead to the Great Depression are still being debated; although there are a few reasons that historians and ecoomics have agreed on. Such as, the stock market crash that occurred on October 29th of 1929. This happened when a few investors began selling their stocks, because they thought the bull market was going to end soon. The bull market was when prices were rising due to automobiles; steel was selling at a record high but was going down very fast.
In a lecture by Professor Newman, it was made known of the concept “selling short”, meaning, big businessmen would try to make more money on a market they knew was going down, and with that came a lot of common people losing money. When prices started to collapse over 40 billion dollars’ worth of stock value suddenly disappeared, and so did people’s money. With this caused the famous stock market crash in 1929. Almost immediately big businessmen started shutting down factories and firing employees and the demand for products went down, and with that, unemployment reached 15 million. In the lecture, Professor Newman uses the example of steel to show how much stocks declined.
Other major causes and symptoms of such a severe economic crisis were the quantities of gold stockpiled by particular countries, large number of banks failing during the 1930s, the reduction in money spent by people and huge international trade barriers placed by governments. During this period it is estimated that international trade reduced by as much as 33% because of various factors. Even though the mentioning of the Great Depression indicates and is connected mostly with the USA it was a global event and a global economic depression. Every nation was in some way affected by the Great Depression, some more, some less, but it is considered that China’s silver standard contributed to making this country almost completely avoid the Great Depression. Countries in Europe experienced the depression differently and tried to fight it off differently.
It did not only affect Americans, but also the whole world. The Great Depression was caused by the crash of the stock market or the lack of real investment opportunities in the 1920’s, product innovation that caused less labor, President Roosevelt believed that it was caused by the structural problems and doubted simulative spending will solve the problem, and some argued it was caused by the shift toward modern employment relation that was made by the Great War. A Depression in the economy can start by raising taxes and dismissing government’s employees and both of these actions can start a depression and both of these were done by the government in 1929. Once this is done, it will have a chain reaction where it will get to the point where the economy will fall and cause its people to live in poverty. The prices of the products will either increase or stay the same but the wages of the people will always decrease.
Before we can explore causes, we first need to define what we mean by The Great Depression The Great Depression was a global economic crisis that may have been triggered by political decisions (war reparations post-World War I), protectionism (Congressional tariffs on European goods) or by speculation .Worldwide, there was increased unemployment, decreased government revenue, a drop in international trade. Its kickoff in the U.S. economy was “Black Thursday," October 24, 1929. That's when 12.9 million shares of stock were sold in one day. It was triple the usual amount. At the height of the Great Depression in 1933, more than a quarter of the US labor force was unemployed.
p. Common Knowledge (Couldn't find a specific page, so the page is the chapter? xD) Following the end of WWI the U.S economy was turning around as the government turned laissez-faire in order for business to grow. As they grew they hired, as this happened people went out and purchased items (including new technologies that increased leisure time). As the items were purchased business grew even more and people invested in the stock market. This would soon prove disastrous as the stock market crashed, leading into the great depression.
The Great Depression of (1929-1939) And the current United States economic situation What is the Depression? Depression is some thing that is very severe to the economic that downturn that lasts for several years. The last time the U. S economy has experienced a depression was since The Great Depression of 1929, which had lasted for about 10 years. The GDP growth rates were a magnitude not since 1930 of -8.6 percent, 1931 of -6.4 percent, 1932 of -19 percent and in 1933 of -1.3 percent.
It devastated not only in the U.S economy and but worldwide. Before the crash, the stock market experienced an all-time high that the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached a record high 381.2. By November, it plummets to as a low 199 and with this low, it caused stocks to lose value about 90 percent. In lieu of the crash of this created a great depression, and it was the longest and most severe depression every experienced by the industrialized Western world. “The fundamental changes impacted the economic institutions in example, banks and macroeconomic policy and economic theory” .