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The Great Depression is the period of history that followed "Black Thursday", the stock market crash of Thursday, October 24, 1929. The events in the United States triggered a world-wide depression, which led to deflation and a great increase in unemployment.

Many economists argue that the Great Depression was both caused and prolonged by government action. Although the initial trigger event may not have been the result of government action, many have argued that incorrect economic policies turned the stock market crash from a momentary crisis into a decade long depression. In particular two polcies have been singled out by economists.

The first is the tight money policies of the Federal Reserve which restricted the money supply. The second was the recourse to protectionism with measures such as the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, which raised tariffs on imports in order to protect local producers who were being hurt by foreign competition. In response, many other countries also raised their tariffs, badly hurting US businesses that exported their goods. This led to a chain reaction of tariff increases which fragmented the world economy.

In the United States, Herbert Hoover was president, and he tried to do something about the situation without much luck. One of the major problems was that with deflation, the currency that you kept in your pocket could buy more goods as the prices went down. The other was that there had been no oversight in the stock market or other investments, and with the collapse, many of the stock and investment schemes were found to be either insolvent, or outright frauds. Unfortunately, many banks had invested in these schemes, and this precipitated a collapse of the banking system in 1932. With the banking system in shambles, and people holding on to whatever currency that they had, there was minimal cash available for any activities that would cause positive change.

In Germany and some other countries, the governments printed more money to avoid this situation, but it actually made the situation worse, as the currency was then being spent on scarce goods, and prices increased exponentially, creating a situation now called hyperinflation. Promising to fix the situation, Adolf Hitler took over the government there. The situation was similar in Italy, where Mussolini took charge.

In 1933 the United States elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt to replace Hoover as president. With unemployment near twenty five percent of the workforce, he initiated a number of government programs to increase liquidity and provide jobs, which jointly are called the New Deal. Some believe that these actions helped bring the country out of the depression--though there is considerable controversy over the extent to which this is true--and provided some of the infrastructure, including roads that are still in use today.

Because the US was still in a state of depression when it entered World War II, it is hard to make a serious argument that the New Deal was a success. The reasons, however are open to debate. Some argue that the inherent instability of a market economy caused such a bad depression that even the well-chosen interventions of the New Deal could not correct it quickly. Others argue that because this longest depression in US history was also marked by the greatest degree of government intervention in US history, it is more reasonable to argue that government action worsened, rather than lessened, the severity of the depression.

It is known that Roosevelt's New Deal programs were initially struck down by the Supreme Court, so that his initial interventions in the economy were all halted. During this time the economy was on a slow improving trend. After the Court began to uphold his interventionist legislation, the economy took a sharp downward dip, which has been called a depression within a depression, from which it was only slowly recovering when the US entered WWII. Thus it is claimed that his intervention delayed the economic recovery that had been underway. This argument is supported by the fact that his programs significantly increased business costs and uncertainty about future government interventions, thus inhibiting business investment and hiring.

Many believe that it was government-induced World War II spending that restarted world-wide economic expansion, but this is at best only partly true. Germany and Italy had "recovered" prior to WWII by making massive military and infrastructure investments. The US moved to full employment during WWII through massive military investments, but also by shifting a very large percentage of the potential work force into the military. While this was necessary, it meant the US economy had not returned to natural market conditions, and when the war ended a period of readjustment was necessary when millions of soldiers returned home. One of the purposes of the G.I. Bill was to ease this transition. In countries such as France, England and the Netherlands, of course, the war caused tremendous harm, rather than being a source of economic revival. While war is always profitable to particular businesses, it causes social and economic dislocations that outweigh any stimulus effects it might have.