What caused it?
Americans.
>>578479
Greed and stupidity
>>578479
A completly unhealthy economy. Uncontrolled growth, too many goods for too few buyers.
>>578479
Trying to go back to the gold standard at the pre-war price level despite the fact that the economy was not anywhere near strong enough to do so.
Idk, like protectionism and shit lol
>thats as far as my knowledge goes
The Fed.
>>578848
Why does this graph look like it was made with paint?
>>578889
because it is?
>>578904
So how do I know if those were the real recoveries of Japan, Britain, Germany and the US?
>>578952
http://bev.berkeley.edu/ipe/readings/The%20origins%20and%20nature%20of%20the%20Great%20Slump%20revisited.pdf
Jews and loans to germany
tfw no gf
>>578872
>The Fed.
Correct. The Great Depression and all subsequent boom/bust cycles can be explained by the Federal Reserve.
I encourage anyone interested in this subject to study the origin and purpose of the Federal Reserve System of the United States. The book "Creature from Jekyll Island" is a good start.
>>580795
Shitty pseudo-libertarian history is shit.
If this thread wants a better critique of the Fed (and other organizations formed at the time) I'd recommend these:
>Kolko, Gabriel. The Triumph of Conservatism. New York: Free Press, 1977. Print.
>Weinstein, James. The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968. Print.
>Sklar, Martin J. The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916: The Market, the Law, and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Print.
>>580951
Correction: Kolko's book was published in 1963.
>>580795
>>580951
Freedom from Fear is about how New Deal fucked up during the Great Depression. It won the Pulitzer.
And speaking of shitty libertarians there's also FDR's Folly basically brings all the arguments together. Right from the start it lists all the questions economists have about it. It's really good and with good sources so you don't have to like the author (Jim Powell).
>>578479
Contraction of the money supply. The banks decided to not re-up business loans, and since most businesses don't have the capital to finance a business cycle, they went under. Even the ones who were prepared lost business due to the general contraction.
The real question is how did it happen? It seems almost conspiratorial in retrospect. The capital that was funding the country ceased to be available, and it's really hard to figure out why. There was no logical reason: even with the Dust Bowl and other technical problems with economy, there was no reason for such an abrupt stop of economic growth. The rain didn't stop falling; the roads and factories didn't stop working; and the masses didn't stop looking for work. It was all a logistical crisis precipitated by the banks.
