Сauses and Сonsequences of Great Depression

In the ten year span of the Great Depression, people were jumping from their windows in cities across the United States, committing suicide. The Great Depression happened in 1929 through 1939, they called it the Great Depression, because more than 9000 banks failed all around the world and it made living very tough. Through the depression, many questions have been asked by many people. Some of the questions are: what were the impacts on humans, what were the impacts on the economy, what caused it, and how did people recover.

Some people may never know the full discussion of those questions, but research still has people wondering if the answers are correct. The Great Depression was one of the biggest drops in the stock market and economy, the depression made living difficult for people in the 1920s.

No country could rise up from the cauldron of nation crisis without profound social and cultural changes. Many undesirable voices associated with hopelessness were on the rise.

Many family units were striving and strengthened through the crisis of the Depression. Large migrations shaped the American mosaic (Independence). One hundred days within the crisis, Franklin D Roosevelt thought of a plan called the New Deal. The New Deal created 42 new agencies. While Roosevelt created this plan, it was designed to create jobs, allow Unitarian, and provide unemployment insurance (Amadeo). The new deal was huge during the Great Depression, it responded to the needs for relief. Huge numbers of these projects still exist. They help defend the economy and keep another Great Depression from happening.

Many contend that World War II, not the new arrangement, finished the Great Depression (Amadeo). WWII had it’s roots in the misery. Financial distress made Germans desperate and crazy enough to elect Adolf Hitler‘s Nazi party in 1933 to a majority. (Amadeo). The recovery after the Depression was so extreme, that bank owners and economic scientists say that it could never happen again. Bigger banks throughout the world including the Federal Reserve, learned from the past (Amadeo). Monetary policy can not offset fiscal policy. The sizes of the US national obligation and the present record shortage could trigger a monetary emergency (Amadeo).

Tons of businesses and banks went bankrupt, and people lost their savings. Factories and stores shut down. Thousands of people lost their jobs. Our world and nation sank to the Great Depression (Arnesen 4). Losing jobs during this time was one of the hardest things to deal with, living wise. No one could afford to buy food, clothes, and other accessories for living. At the very least between 1/4 and 1/3 of work workforce was jobless. People that were lucky enough to keep their jobs saw their work hours reduced and wages cut. Many Americans struggled to buy food (Arnesen 4). With so many people suffering at the same time, government seemed powerless at all levels. In 1932, Franklin D Roosevelt was elected. He offered Americans a new deal. He authorized a number of federal emergency programs to reconstruct the economy of the nations (Arnesen 4). During the Great Depression, people with no money would steal from others, so many burglars would steal things, and crime increased a lot. The Depression reached its peak in 1933, with unemployment rising from 3% to 25% of the workforce of the nations. Salaries fell 42 percent for those who still had jobs (Amadeo). The US gross domestic product has been halved from 103 billion dollars to 55 billion dollars. This was partly due to deflation (Amadeo).

According to the labor statistics office, the consumer price index fell 27% between November 1929 and March 1933. Government leaders past the Smoot-Hawley tariff to protect domestic industries and jobs (Amadeo). The Smoot Hawley Tariff raised import duties, and protected American businesses and farmers, adding considerable strain to the international economic climate of the Great Depression. The depression led to farmers losing their farms. At the same time, years of overgrowth and drought have created the powder bowl in the Midwest. Agriculture in the fertile regions ended (Amadeo). As stated in the book What was the Great Depression, “ in 1920 United States government made it illegal to sell alcoholic drinks, also known as Prohibition. People who made or smuggle drinks were called bootleggers. The power of bootleggers during prohibition led to the rise of gangster organizations during the depression” (Pascal 8). The 1929 Great Depression devastated the American economy. Half of the banks failed. Unemployment rose 25% and homelessness as well. Housing prices plummeted by 30%, international trade plummeted by 60%, and prices decreased by 10% annually. It took the stock market 25 years to fully recover (Amadeo).

In the first five years of the depression, the economy declined by 50%. In 1929, economic output amounted to $105 billion of gross domestic product (Amadeo). This has been one of the biggest economic struggles in history, and it is crazy that bankers and scientists say that it could never happen again. As stated in the article How the Lows of the Great Depression Still Affects Us Today, “New deal spending boosted GDP growth by 10.8% in 1934. It grew another 8.9% in 1935, a whopping 12.9% in 1936, and 5.1% in 1937. The BLS reported again that the unemployment rate peaked at 24.9%” (Amadeo). By 1933, at least four years of the country underwent economic contraction. It only produced $57 billion, half what it produced in 1929” (Amadeo).

As stated in the article What happened during the Great Depression, “The Fed began raising the fed funds rate in the spring of 1928. It kept increasing it through a recession that started in August 1929. The Fed did not increase the supply of money to combat deflation” (Amadeo). At the end of the 1920s, the United States boasted the world largest economy. Nine thousand banks failed within a week of 1929, and that was how the Depression had all started. One key factor in turning the national economic difficulties into global depression appears to have been the lack of international coordination, as the majority of governments and financial institutions have gone in (Depression). Investors turned to the currency market when the stock market crashed. At the time, the gold standard supported the value of the US governments dollars (Amadeo).

Harsh living conditions made people have no money, necessities, or even food. While researching, it is easy to see why people were frustrated with the stock market and banks throughout the 30’s. Also that many questions like what were the impacts on humans, what were the impacts on the economy, what caused it, and how did people recover were answered and unanswered. In the ten year span of the Great Depression that was happening, people were jumping from their windows in cities across the United States, committing suicide.