Great Depression

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Debt liquidation and distress selling
Contraction of the money supply as bank loans are paid off
A fall in the level of asset prices
A still greater fall in the net worths of business, precipitating bankruptcies
A fall in profits
A reduction in output, in trade and in employment.
Pessimism and loss of confidence
Hoarding of money
A fall in nominal interest rates and a rise in deflation adjusted interest rates.

During the Crash of 1929 preceeding the Great Depression, margin requirements were only 10%. Brokerage firms, in other words, would lend $9 for every $1 an investor had deposited. When the market fell, brokers called in these loans, which could not be paid back. Banks began to fail as debtors defaulted on debt and depositors attempted to withdraw their deposits en masse, triggering multiple bank runs. Government guarantees and Federal Reserve banking regulations to prevent such panics were ineffective or not used. Bank failures led to the loss of billions of dollars in assets.vity in t

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 | last = Griffe country hBritain, which saw it fall only to 83% of the 1929 level. Total national income fell to 56% of th)|chiFinance Corporation]] (RFC) which aided cities, banks and railroads, and continued as a major agency under the New to 1937). In Roosevelt's second term, the economy went into a short, sharp recession in 1937-38.  In 1929, federal expenditures constituted only 3% of the GDP. The national debt as a proportion of GNP rose under Hoover from 20% to 40%. Roosevelt kept it at 40% until the war began, when it soared to 128%. After the Recession of 1937, conservatives were able to form a bipartisan conservative coalition to stop further expansion of the New Deal and, when unemployment dropped to 2% they abolished WPA, CCC and the PWA relief programs; Social Security, however, remained in place.

====Recession of 1937====easury Department]], Roosevelt em

On the other hand, according to economist Robert Higgs, when looking only at the supply of consumer goods, significant GDP growth resumed only in 1946 (Higgs does not estimate the value to consumers of collective, intangible goods like victory in war). To some Keynesians, the war economy showed just how large the fiscal stimulus required to end the downturn of the Depression was, and it led, at the time, to fears that as soon as America demobilized, it would return to Depression conditions, and industrial output would fall to pre-war levels. That Keynesian prediction that a new depression would start after the war failed to take into account massive savings and pent-up consumer demand, along with the ending of the restrictive wartime regulations in most consumer industries, and the cutting of high tax rates starting in 1946. In any case, government spending and changing regulations (first tightening them, then loosening them) appear to have contributed to the recovery, as consumer and producer behavior changed.

Keynesian models

In the early 1930s, before John Maynard Keynes wrote The General Theory, he was advocating public works programs and deficits as a way to get the British economy out of the Depression. Although Keynes never mentions fiscal policy in The General Theory, and instead advocates the need to socialize investments, Keynes ushered in more of a theoretical revolution than a policy one. His basic idea was simple: to keep people fully employed, governments have to run deficits when the economy is slowing because the private sector will not invest enough to increase production and reverse the recession.

As the Depression wore on, Roosevelt tried public works, farm subsidies, and other devices to restart the economy, but never completely gave up trying to balance the budget. According to the Keynesians, he needed to spend much more money; they were unable to say how much more. With fiscal policy, however, government could provide the needed Keynesian spending by decreasing taxes, increasing government spending, and increasing individuals' incomes. As incomes increased, they would spend more. As they spent more, the multiplier effect would take over and expand the effect on the initial spending. The Keynesians did not estimate what the size of the multiplier was. Keynesian economists assumed poor people would spend new incomes; however, they saved much of the new money; that is, they paid back debts owed to landlords, grocers and family. Keynesian ideas of the consumption function were upset in the 1950s by Milton Friedman and Franco Modigliani.

Neoclassical approach

Recent work from a neoclassical perspective focuses on the decline in productivity that caused the initial decline in output and a prolonged recovery due to policies that affected the labor market. This work, collected by Kehoe and Prescott, decomposes the economic decline into a decline in the labor force, capital stock, and the productivity with which these inputs are used. This study suggests that theories of the Great Depression have to explain an initial severe decline but rapid recovery in productivity, relatively little change in the capital stock, and a prolonged depression in the labor force. This analysis rejects theories that focus on the role of savings and posit a decline in the capital stock.

Gold standard

Every major currency left the gold standard during the Great Depression. Great Britain was the first to do so. Facing speculative attacks on the pound and depleting gold reserves, in September 1931 the Bank of England ceased exchanging pound notes for gold and the pound was floated on foreign exchange markets.

Great Britain, Japan, and the Scandinavian countries left the gold standard in 1931. Other countries, such as Italy and the United States, remained on the gold standard into 1932 or 1933, while a few countries in the so-called "gold bloc", led by France and including Poland, Belgium and Switzerland, stayed on the standard until 1935-1936.

According to later analysis, the earliness with which a country left the gold standard reliably predicted its economic recovery. For example, Great Britain and Scandinavia, which left the gold standard in 1931, recovered much earlier than France and Belgium, which remained on gold much longer. Countries such as China, which had a silver standard, almost avoided the depression entirely. The connection between leaving the gold standard as a strong predictor of that country's severity of its depression and the length of time of its recovery has been shown to be consistent for dozens of countries, including developing countries. This partly explains why the experience and length of the depression differed between national economies.

Rearmament and recovery

The massive rearmament policies to counter the threat from Nazi Germany helped stimulate the economies of Europe in 1937-39. By 1937, unemployment in Britain had fallen to 1.5 million. The mobilization of manpower following the outbreak of war in 1939 finally ended unemployment.

In the United States, the massive war spending doubled the GNP, either masking the effects of the Depression or essentially ending the Depression. Businessmen ignored the mounting national debt and heavy new taxes, redoubling their efforts for greater output to take advantage of generous government contracts. Productivity soared: most people worked overtime and gave up leisure activities to make money after so many hard years. People accepted rationing and price controls for the first time as a way of expressing their support for the war effort. Cost-plus pricing in munitions contracts guaranteed businesses a profit no matter how many mediocre workers they employed or how inefficient the techniques they used. The demand was for a vast quantity of war supplies as soon as possible, regardless of cost. Businesses hired every person in sight, even driving sound trucks up and down city streets begging people to apply for jobs. New workers were needed to replace the 11 million working-age men serving in the military. These events magnified the role of the federal government in the national economy. In 1929, federal expenditures accounted for only 3% of GNP. Between 1933 and 1939, federal expenditure tripled, and Roosevelt's critics charged that he was turning America into a socialist state. However, spending on the New Deal was far smaller than on the war effort.

Political consequences

The crisis had many political consequences, among which was the abandonment of classic economic liberal approaches, which Roosevelt replaced in the United States with Keynesian policies. It was a main factor in the implementation of social democracy and planned economies in European countries after World War II. (see Marshall Plan). Although Austrian economists had challenged Keynesianism since the 1920s, it was not until the 1970s, with the influence of Milton Friedman that the Keynesian approach was politically questioned, leading the way to neoliberalism.

Facts and figures

Effects of depression in the United States:

13 million people became unemployed.
Industrial production fell by nearly 45% between the years 1929 and 1932.
Home-building dropped by 80% between the years 1929 and 1932.
From the years 1929 to 1932, about 5,000 banks went out of business.

Other great depressions

There have been other downturns called a "Great Depression," but none has been as worldwide for so long. British economic historians use the term "Great depression" to describe British conditions in the late 19th century, especially in agriculture, 1873-1896, a period also referred to as the Long Depression. Several Latin American countries had severe downturns in the 1980s. Finnish economists refer to the Finnish economic decline around the breakup of the Soviet Union (1989-1994) as a great depression. Kehoe and Prescott define a great depression to be a period of diminished economic output with at least one year where output is 20% below the trend. By this definition Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico experienced great depressions in the 1980s, and Argentina experienced another in 1998-2002. This definition also includes the economic performance of New Zealand from 1974-1992 and Switzerland from 1973 to the present, although this designation for Switzerland has been controversial.

Notes

Cite error: The named reference Fisher33 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
Lawrence R. Klein, The Keynesian Revolution(1947) 56-58, 169, 177-79; Theodore Rosenof, Economics in the Long Run: New Deal Theorists and Their Legacies, 1933-1993 (1997)
Kehoe, Timothy J.; Prescott, Edward C. (2007). Great Depressions of the Twentieth Century. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Bernanke, Ben (March 2, 2004), "Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke: Money, Gold and the Great Depression", At the H. Parker Willis Lecture in Economic Policy, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia
Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur M. The Coming of the New Deal: 1933-1935. Paperback ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. (First published in 1958) ISBN 0618340866; Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur M. The Politics of Upheaval: 1935-1936. Paperback ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. (First published in 1960) ISBN 0618340874
Lanny Ebenstein, Milton Friedman: A Biography (2007)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7655472.stm
T. W. Fletcher, "The Great Depression of English Agriculture 1873-1896," The Economic History Review, Vol. 13, No. 3 (1961), pp. 417-432 in JSTOR
Abrahamsen Y, R.; Aeppli, E.; Atukeren, M.; Graff, C.; Müller; Schips, B. (2005). "The Swiss disease: Facts and artefacts. A reply to Kehoe and Prescott". Review of Economic Dynamics. 8 (3): 749–758. doi:10.1016/j.red.2004.06.003.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Kehoe, T. J.; Ruhl, K. J. (2005). "Is Switzerland in a Great Depression?". 8. Review of Economic Dynamics: 759–775. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

External links

Great Depressions of the Twentieth Century, edited by T. J. Kehoe and E. C. Prescott
Theories of the Great Depression, R. L. Norman, Jr.
America in the 1930s. Very large multi-mediated project on America in the Great Depression
Recession? Depression? What's the difference? (About.com)
An Overview of the Great Depression from EH.NET by Randall Parker.
Great Myths of the Great Depression by Lawrence Reed
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library & Museum for copyright-free photos of the period
Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure by Murray Rothbard (1969)
Great Depression in the Deep South

v t e Great Depression
Topics	Causes Wall Street Crash of 1929 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act Dust Bowl Effect in cities Recession of 1937–1938 Timeline
By country	Argentina Australia Brazil Canada Chile France Germany India Italy Japan Latin America Netherlands Romania South Africa United Kingdom United States
United States	Bonus Army New Deal
Category Commons

v t e Economic expansions and recessions in the United States and Commonwealth of Nations countries
Aggregate demand/Supply Effective demand General glut Model Overproduction Paradox of thrift Price-and-wage stickiness Underconsumption Business cycle Deflation/Inflation Chronic Classical dichotomy Disinflation Money supply/demand Neutrality of money Price level Real and nominal values Velocity of money Economic expansion Recovery Stagnation U.S. expansions Interest rate Nominal interest rate Real interest rate Yield curve/Inverted Recession Balance sheet Depression Global Rolling Shapes Stagflation U.K. recessions U.S. recessions Shock Demand Supply Unemployment Sahm rule
Commercial revolution (1000–1760)	Great Slump (1430–1490) Slump of 1706 Great Frost of 1709
1st Industrial Revolution (1760–1840)	British credit crisis of 1772–1773 1772–1774; England Scotland American Colonies 1785–1788 Copper Panic of 1789/Panic of 1792 (1789–1793) Panic of 1796–1797 (1796–1799) 1802–1804 1807–1810 1812 Post-Napoleonic Depression (1815–1821) 1822–23 Panic of 1825 (1825–1826) 1828–29 1833–34 Panic of 1837 (1836–1838 and 1839–1843)
Early Victorian Britain/ Civil War-era United States (1840–1870)	1845–46 Panic of 1847 (1847–1848) 1853–54 Panic of 1857 (1857–1858) 1860–61 Panic of 1866 (1865–1867) Black Friday (1869–1870)
Gilded Age/ 2nd Industrial Revolution (1870–1914)	Long Depression/Great Deflation 1873–1879; United Kingdom United States Depression of 1882–1885 1887–88 Baring crisis (1890–1891) Panic of 1893 (1893–1897) 1899–1900 Panic of 1901 (1902–1904) Panic of 1907 (1907–1908) Panic of 1910–11 (1910–1912) Financial crisis of 1914 (1913–14)
Interwar period (1918–1939)	Post–World War I recession (1918–1919) Depression of 1920–1921 Roaring Twenties 1923–1924 1926–1927 Great Depression 1929–1939; Australia Canada India New Zealand South Africa United Kingdom United States Recession of 1937–1938
Post–WWII expansion (1945–1973)	1945 Recession of 1949 (1948–1949) Recession of 1953 (1953–1954) Recession of 1958 (1957–1958) Recession of 1960–1961 Recession of 1969–1970
Great Inflation (1973–1982)	1973–1975 recession United Kingdom United States Early 1980s recession 1980–1982; Canada United Kingdom United States
Great Moderation/ Great Regression (1982–2007)	1990s United States boom Early 1990s recession 1990–1991; Australia Canada United Kingdom United States 1997 Asian financial crisis Early 2000s recession (2001)
Information Age (2007–present)	Great Recession 2007–2009; Australia Bangladesh Canada India Malaysia New Zealand Pakistan South Africa Sri Lanka United Kingdom United States COVID-19 recession 2020–2022; Australia Bangladesh Belize Botswana Canada India Malaysia Namibia New Zealand Singapore United Kingdom United States Zambia

v t e New Deal
Causes and legacy	Great Depression New Deal Coalition Brain Trust Criticism
New Deal	Emergency Banking Act Economy Act Agricultural Adjustment Act Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Civil Works Administration Communications Act Executive Order 6102 Homeowners Refinancing Act Farm Credit Administration Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Federal Emergency Relief Administration Frazier–Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act Glass–Steagall Act National Industrial Recovery Act National Housing Act National Recovery Administration National Youth Administration Public Works Administration (PWA) Public Works of Art Project Reciprocal Tariff Act Railroad Retirement Act Securities Act Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
Second New Deal	Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Project Number One Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Farm Security Administration Judicial Procedures Reform Act National Bituminous Coal Conservation Act National Labor Relations Board (Act) Rural Electrification Act Rural Electrification Administration Social Security United States Housing Authority Fair Labor Standards Act
Individuals	Franklin D. Roosevelt Eleanor Roosevelt Harry Hopkins Harold L. Ickes Henry Morgenthau Jr. Frances Perkins Robert F. Wagner
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