About The great depression was an economic slump in North

New Post Public Reply Private Reply Replies (1) Message Board

Apr 6, 2013 at 8:29 PM

About The great depression was an economic slump in North America, Europe, and other industrialized areas of the world that began in 1929 and lasted until about 1939. It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world.

Though the U.S. economy had gone into depression six months earlier, the Great Depression may be said to have begun with a catastrophic collapse of stock-market prices on the New York Stock Exchange in October 1929. During the next three years stock prices in the United States continued to fall, until by late 1932 they had dropped to only about 20 percent of their value in 1929. 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; by 1932, U.S. manufacturing output had fallen to 54 percent of its 1929 level, and unemployment had risen to between 12 and 15 million workers, or 25-30 percent of the work force.

The Great Depression began in the United States but quickly turned into a worldwide economic slump owing to the special and intimate relationships that had been forged between the United States and European economies after World War I. The United States had emerged from the war as the major creditor and financier of postwar Europe, whose national economies had been greatly weakened by the war itself, by war debts, and, in the case of Germany and other defeated nations, by the need to pay war reparations. So once the American economy slumped and the flow of American investment credits to Europe dried up, prosperity tended to collapse there as well. The Depression hit hardest those nations that were most deeply indebted to the United States, i.e., Germany and Great Britain. In Germany, unemployment rose sharply beginning in late 1929, and by early 1932 it had reached 6 million workers, or 25 percent of the work force. Britain was less severely affected, but its industrial and export sectors remained seriously depressed until World War II. Many other countries had been affected by the slump by 1931.

Almost all nations sought to protect their domestic production by imposing tariffs, raising existing ones, and setting quotas on foreign imports. The effect of these restrictive measures was to greatly reduce the volume of international trade: by 1932 the total value of world trade had fallen by more than half as country after country took measures against the importation of foreign goods.

The Great Depression had important consequences in the political sphere. In the United States, economic distress led to the election of the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in late 1932. Roosevelt introduced a number of major changes in the structure of the American economy, using increased government regulation and massive public-works projects to promote a recovery. But despite this active intervention, mass unemployment and economic stagnation continued, though on a somewhat reduced scale, with about 15 percent of the work force still unemployed in 1939 at the outbreak of World War II. After that, unemployment dropped rapidly as American factories were flooded with orders from overseas for armaments and munitions. The depression ended completely soon after the United States' entry into World War II in 1941. In Europe, the Great Depression strengthened extremist forces and lowered the prestige of liberal democracy. In Germany, economic distress directly contributed to Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933. The Nazis' public-works projects and their rapid expansion of munitions production ended the Depression there by 1936.

At least in part, the Great Depression was caused by underlying weaknesses and imbalances within the U.S. economy that had been obscured by the boom psychology and speculative euphoria of the 1920s. The Depression exposed those weaknesses, as it did the inability of the nation's political and financial institutions to cope with the vicious downward economic cycle that had set in by 1930. Prior to the Great Depression, governments traditionally took little or no action in times of business downturn, relying instead on impersonal market forces to achieve the necessary economic correction. But market forces alone proved unable to achieve the desired recovery in the early years of the Great Depression, and this painful discovery eventually inspired some fundamental changes in the United States' economic structure. After the Great Depression, government action, whether in the form of taxation, industrial regulation, public works, social insurance, social-welfare services, or deficit spending, came to assume a principal role in ensuring economic stability in most industrial nations with market economies.

Newer

Older

Scroll down for more posts ▼

Top 10 Most Recent News Articles

TalentNeuron Enhances Workforce Planning with New Tools

A Game Changer for Workforce Strategy You ever get the feeling businesses treat workforce planning like a jigsaw puzzle, except the pieces change shape daily? Well, TalentNeuron's out here flipping the table by introducing some fancy new capabilities that'll make those pieces fit a whole lot easier. Yeah, it's about time someone thought to merge continuous workforce...

Wet Noses Innovates Human-Grade Pet Food at PLMA 2026

Pet Food Revolution? Wet Noses Takes the PLMA Stage Okay, listen up, pet lovers and industry folks alike—seems like Wet Noses, that Washington-based veteran in the dog treat game, is shaking up the pet food world. After cruising through the pet aisle for almost three decades, they're making a splash at the PLMA 2026. Why should we care? Well, they’re pushing this...

TETRA Hits High Mark with Robust Q3 Earnings Surge

Financial Milestones and Market Insights Boy, if you're not watching TETRA Technologies (NYSE:TTI) right now, you're probably missing out on a real barnstormer of a financial report. The numbers are looking chalkboards-be-damned stellar! They’ve just notched their finest third quarter in a decade, bringing in revenues through the roof at $168 million—an impressive 10%...

D-Wave Quantum Faces Legal Heat: Key Investor Timelines

Trouble Surfacing for D-Wave Quantum Investors It's another day, another dollar slipping out of an investor's pocket. Welcome to the circus. Today's main act? D-Wave Quantum, Inc., sporting a 9.51% drop in stock value. Now, those holding NASDAQ: QBTS shares during that class period between late February and August of 2026 might want to listen up. The lawyers over at...

Milwaukee Cylinder Unveils Tech for Longevity in Tough Conditions

Innovation Meets Contamination: ABC™ Technology Unleashed In the gritty halls of industrial manufacturing, equipment uptime can be the thin red line between profit and chaos. Milwaukee Cylinder just kicked it up a notch with their latest concoction: Active Barrier Chamber (ABC™) technology. This gizmo isn't just another shiny trinket; it's a genuine attempt to wrestle...

Instanodes Tackling Quantum Threats in Blockchain

Diving Into Quantum Cryptography for Blockchain Instanodes is throwing down the gauntlet for the blockchain crowd as the field of quantum computing edges ever closer to unsettling the cryptographic order. This company's latest play? Post-quantum account engineering for major players like Ethereum and Solana. And it's not just tinkering—they're giving the status quo a...

Comedy Giants Unite for 'We Them One's' Tour 2027

Comedy's Heavyweights Hit the Road for 2027 Tour Kicking off in Milwaukee on February 5, 2027, comedy gets a new spotlight as BMN Entertainment launches the much-anticipated return of the 'We Them One's' Comedy Tour. This isn't your run-of-the-mill comedy gig, folks. We're talking about headlining act Mike Epps, comedy’s sharp shooter and stage powerhouse, teaming up...

Stellantis Harnesses AI for Customer Connection Boost

Trading Mayhem: Pre-Market Vibes Ever put your ear to the ground on the NYSE floor and felt that buzz of untamed optimism clashing with skepticism? Today it's all about connections, from the data-driven to the familial. Imagine Stellantis (NYSE: STLA) is making a play, aligning with Amperity in an ambitious attempt to make customer interactions feel more personal. Now,...

Hagerty Amplifies Profit Forecast Amid Premium Gains

An Unyielding Growth Trajectory Hagerty, Inc. just unveiled its behemoth third quarter results for 2026 and they're nothing if not eye-popping. With a whopping 18% increase in written premium year-over-year to a towering $1,099 million, there's no mistaking Hagerty’s robust growth trajectory. And that's just one piece of the puzzle—earned premiums rocketed up by 42%...

New CEO at Armor: Nicholas Lee Takes Helm

Leadership Shakeup at Armor Well, here's a twist in the ever-spinning merry-go-round of tech leadership: Armor's got a new top dog. Nicholas Lee, the former big shot at Fujitsu Intelligence, is now steering the ship as CEO, effective November 2, 2026. With his broad and varied playbook in tech and AI, Lee's stepping into some big shoes with plans to bolster Armor’s...