Great Depression

The Great Depression was a time of economic down turn, which started after the Stock Market Crash on October 29, 1929, also known as Black Tuesday. It began in the United States and quickly spread to Europe and every part of the world, with devastating effects in both industrialized countries and those which export raw materials. International trade declined sharply, as did personal incomes, tax revenues, prices and profits. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries. Farming and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by 40 to 60 percent.^[1] Mining and logging areas had perhaps the most striking blow because the demand fell sharply and there were few employment alternatives. The Great Depression ended at different times in different countries; for subsequent history see Home front during World War II. The majority of countries set up relief programs, and most underwent some sort of political upheaval, pushing them to the left or right. Democracy was weakened and on the defensive, as dictators such as Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini made major gains, which helped set the stage for World War II in 1939.

Lurching downward

The Great Depression was not a sudden total collapse; the decline came in fits and starts over a period of three years, reaching the bottom in March 1933, with occasional small upward blips. In the spring of 1930, credit was ample and available at low rates, but people feared for the future and were reluctant to add new debt by borrowing. Auto sales declined below the levels of 1928 at the end of May, 1930. Prices declined across the board, but wages held steady until they started down in 1931. Conditions were worst in farming areas where commodity prices plunged, and in mining and logging areas where unemployment was high and there were few alternative jobs. The decline in the American economy was the motor that pulled down most other countries at first, then internal weaknesses or strengths in each country made conditions worse or better.

Causes

Main article: Causes of the Great Depression

Business cycles are a normal part of living in a world of inexact balances between supply and demand. What turns a usually mild and short recession or "ordinary" business cycle into a great depression is a subject of debate and concern. Scholars have not agreed on the exact causes and their relative importance. The search for causes is closely connected to the question of how to avoid a future depression, and so the political and policy viewpoints of scholars are mixed into the analysis of historic events eight decades ago. The even larger question is whether it was largely a failure on the part of free markets or largely a failure on the part of governments to prevent widespread bank failures and the resulting panics and reduction in the money supply. Those who believe in a large role for governments in the economy believe it was mostly a failure of the free markets and those who believe in free markets believe it was mostly a failure of government that exacerbated the problem. Current theories may be broadly classified into two or more main points of view. First, there is orthodox classical economics: monetarist, Austrian Economics and neoclassical economic theory, all which focus on the macroeconomic effects of money supply and the supply of gold which backed many currencies before the Great Depression, including production and consumption. Second, there are structural theories, most importantly Keynesian, but also including those of institutional economics, that point to underconsumption and over investment (economic bubble), malfeasance by bankers and industrialists or incompetence by government officials. Another theory revolves around the surplus of products and the fact that many Americans were not purchasing but saving. The only consensus viewpoint is that there was a large scale lack of confidence. Unfortunately, once panic and deflation set in, many people believed they could make more money by keeping clear of the markets as prices got lower and lower and a given amount of money bought ever more goods.

There are multiple reasons on what set off the first downturn in 1929, concerning the structural weaknesses and specific events that turned it into a major depression, and the way in which the downturn spread from country to country. In terms of the 1929 small downturn, historians emphasize structural factors like massive bank failures and the stock market crash, while economists (such as Peter Temin and Barry Eichengreen) point to Britain's decision to return to the Gold Standard at pre-World War I parities (US$4.86:£1).

Debt

Macroeconomists, including the current chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank System Ben Bernanke, have revived the debt-deflation view of the Great Depression originated by Arthur Cecil Pigou and Irving Fisher. In the 1920s, in the U.S. the widespread use of purchases of businesses and factories on credit and the use of home mortgages and credit purchases of automobiles, furniture and even some stocks boosted spending but created consumer and commercial debt. People and businesses who were deeply in debt when a price deflation occurred or demand for their product decreased were often in serious trouble—even if they kept their jobs, they risked default. Many drastically cut current spending to keep up time payments, thus lowering demand for new products. Businesses began to fail as construction work and factory orders plunged.

Massive layoffs occurred, resulting in unemployment rates of over 25%. Banks which had financed a lot of this debt began to fail as debtors defaulted on debt and bank depositors became worried about their deposits and began massive withdrawals. Government guarantees and Federal Reserve banking regulations to prevent these types of panics were ineffective or not used. Bank failures led to the evaporation of billions of dollars in assets. Up to 40% of the available money supply normally used for purchases and bank payments was destroyed by all these bank failures.

Furthermore, the debt became heavier, because prices and incomes fell 20–50%, but the debts remained at the same dollar amount. After the panic of 1929, and during the first 10 months of 1930, 744 banks failed. In all, 9,000 banks failed during the decade of the 30s. By 1933, depositors saw $140 billion of their deposits disappear due to uninsured bank failures. [1] Bank failures snowballed as desperate bankers tried calling in loans which the borrowers did not have time or money to repay. With future profits looking poor, capital investment and construction slowed or completely ceased. In the face of bad loans and worsening future prospects, the surviving banks became even more conservative in their lending.[2] Banks built up their capital reserves, which intensified deflationary pressures. The vicious cycle developed and the downward spiral accelerated. This kind of self-aggravating process may have turned a 1930 recession into a 1933 great depression.

Trade decline and the U.S. Smoot-Hawley tariff act

Many economists have argued that the sharp decline in international trade after 1930 helped to worsen the depression, especially for countries significantly dependent on foreign trade. Most historians and economists assign the American Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 part of the blame for worsening the depression by seriously reducing international trade and causing retaliatory regulations in other countries. Foreign trade was a small part of overall economic activity in the United States and was concentrated in a few businesses like farming; it was a much larger factor in many other countries. [3] The average ad valorem rate of duties on dutiable imports for 1921–1925 was 25.9% but under the new tariff it jumped to 50% in 1931–1935.

In dollar terms, American exports declined from about $5.2 billion in 1929 to $1.7 billion in 1933; but prices also fell, so the physical volume of exports only fell in half. Hardest hit were farm commodities such as wheat, cotton, tobacco, and lumber. According to this theory, the collapse of farm exports caused many American farmers to default on their loans leading to the bank runs on small rural banks that characterized the early years of the Great Depression.

U.S. Federal Reserve and money supply

Monetarists, including Milton Friedman and Benjamin Bernanke, argue that the Great Depression was caused by monetary contraction, which was consequence of poor policy making by the American Federal Reserve System and continuous crisis in banking system.^[3] By not acting, the Federal Reserve allowed the money supply to shrink by one-third from 1930 to 1931. Friedman argued^[4] the downward turn in the economy starting with the stock market crash would have been just another recession. The problem wasn't that some large, public bank failures, particularly the Huntly New York Bank of the United States, produced panic and widespread runs on local banks, and that the Federal Reserve sat idly by while banks fell. He claimed if the Fed had provided emergency lending to these key banks, or simply bought government bonds on the open market to provide liquidity and increase the quantity of money after the key banks fell, all the rest of the banks would not have fallen after the large ones did and the money supply would not have fallen to the extent and at the speed that it did.^[5] With significantly less money to go around, businessmen could not get new loans and could not even get their old loans renewed, forcing many to stop investing. This interpretation blames the Federal Reserve for inaction, especially the New York branch, which was owned and controlled by Wall Street bankers. The Federal Reserve, by design, was not controlled by the President or the U.S. Treasury; it was primarily controlled by member banks and the chairman of the Federal Reserve.^[6]

Business

Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected in 1932, primarily blamed the excesses of big business for causing an unstable bubble-like economy. Democrats believed the problem was that business had too much power, and the New Deal was intended as a remedy, by empowering labor unions and farmers and by raising taxes on corporate profits. Regulation of the economy was a favorite remedy. Some New Deal regulation (the NRA and AAA) was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. Most New Deal regulations were abolished or scaled back in the 1970s and 1980s in a bipartisan wave of deregulation.^[7] However the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Reserve, and Social Security won widespread support which continues to this day.

Government deficit spending

British economist John Maynard Keynes argued in General Theory of Employment Interest and Money that lower aggregate expenditures in the economy contributed to a massive decline in income and employment that was well below the average. In this situation, the economy might have reached a perfect balance, at a cost of high unemployment. Keynesian economists called for governments during times of economic crisis to pick up the slack by increasing government spending and/or cutting taxes.

Massive increases in deficit spending, new banking regulation, and boosting farm prices did start turning the U.S. economy around in 1933, but it was a slow and painful process. The U.S. had not returned to 1929's GNP for over a decade and was still having a unemployment rate of about 15% in 1940--down from 25% in 1932. The unemployment problem was not "solved" until the advent of World War II, when about 12 million men were drafted and taken out of the labor market. Multiple war good production programs reduced unemployment to under 2% and brought in millions of new workers to the labor markets.

Literature

The U.S. Depression has been the subject of much writing, as the country has sought to reevaluate an era that dumped emotional as well as financial catastrophe on its people. Perhaps the most note-worthy and famous novel written on the subject is The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the novel and the Nobel Prize for literature for this work. The novel, which was later made into a movie, focuses on a poor family of sharecroppers who are forced from their home as drought, economic hardship, and changes in the agricultural industry occur during the Great Depression.

Effects

Australia

Main article: Great Depression in Australia

Australia's extreme dependence on agricultural and industrial exports, meant it was one of the hardest-hit countries in the Western world, amongst the likes of Canada and Germany. Falling export demand and commodity prices placed massive downward pressures on wages. Further, unemployment reached a record high of 29% in 1932, with incidents of civil unrest becoming common. After 1932, an increase in wool and meat prices led to a gradual recovery.

Great Britain

Main article: Great Depression in the United Kingdom

Canada

Main article: Great Depression in Canada

Canada is sometimes considered to be the country hardest hit by the Great Depression. The economy fell further than any nation other than the United States, and it took far longer to recover. However, unlike in the U.S., there were no bank failures in Canada.

East Asia

Main article: Great Depression in East Asia

The Great Depression in East Asia was of minor impact. The Japanese economy shrank by 8% 1929-31, but recovered by 1932 and continued to grow.

France

Main article: Great Depression in France

Germany

Germany's Weimar Republic was hit hard by the depression, as the loans that they were receiving from America to help rebuild their country now stopped. Unemployment soared, especially in larger cities, and the political system veered toward extremism. Hitler's Nazi Party came to power in January 1933. In 1934 the economy was still not balanced enough for Germany to work on its own. In 1935 Germany ran out of money completely primarily due to the reperations it was still paying to the victor countries of World War I.

The Netherlands

Main article: Great Depression in the Netherlands

Latin America

Main article: Great Depression in Latin America

South Africa

Main article: Great Depression in South Africa

United States

Main article: Great Depression in the United States

Responses in the United States

Initial reaction in the United States

Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon advised President Hoover shock treatment would be the best response: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.... [That] will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people."^[8] Hoover rejected this advice, not believing government should directly aid the people, but insisted instead on "voluntary cooperation" between business and government.

New Deal in the United States

Main article: New Deal

From 1933 onward, Roosevelt argued a restructuring of the economy would be needed to prevent another or avoid prolonging the current depression. New Deal programs sought to stimulate demand and provide work and relief for the impoverished through increased government spending, by:

• Reforming the financial system, especially the banks and Wall Street. The Securities Act of 1933 comprehensively regulated the securities industry. This was followed by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 which created the Securities and Exchange Commission. (Though amended, the key provisions of both Acts are still in force as of 2007). Federal insurance of bank deposits was provided by the FDIC (still operating as of 2007), and the Glass-Steagal Act (which remained in effect for 50 years).
• Instituting regulations which ended what was called "cut-throat competition," which kept forcing down prices and profits for everyone. (The NRA, which ended in 1935).
• Setting minimum prices and wages and competitive conditions in all industries. (NRA)
• Encouraging unions that would raise wages, to increase the purchasing power of the working class. (NRA)
• Cutting farm production so as to raise prices and make it possible to earn a living in farming (done by the AAA and successor farm programs).

The most controversial aspect of the New Deal agencies was the National Recovery Administration (NRA). It lasted less than two years (1933-34) and ordered:

• businesses to work with government to set price codes;
• the NRA board to set labor codes and standards.

These reforms (together with relief and recover measures) are called by historians the First New Deal. It was centered around the use of an alphabet soup of agencies set up in 1933 and 1934, along with the use of previous agencies such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, to regulate and stimulate the economy. By 1935, the "Second New Deal" added social security, a national relief agency (the Works Progress Administration, WPA) and, through the National Labor Relations Board, a strong stimulus to the growth of labor unions. Unemployment fell by two-thirds in Roosevelt's first term (from 25% to 9%, 1933 to 1937), but then remained stubbornly high until 1942.

In 1929, federal expenditures constituted only 3% of the GDP. Between 1933 and 1939, they tripled, funded primarily by a growth in the national debt. The debt as 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, by 1943, had abolished all of the relief programs.

Recession of 1937 in the United States

Main article: Recession of 1937

In 1937, the American economy took an unexpected nosedive, lasting through most of 1938. Production declined sharply, as did profits and employment. Unemployment jumped from 14.3% in 1937 to 19.0% in 1938. The Roosevelt administration reacted by launching a rhetorical campaign against monopoly power, which was cast as the cause of the depression, and appointing Thurman Arnold to act; Arnold's effectiveness ended once World War II began and corporate energies had to be directed to winning the war.

The administration's other response to the 1937 deepening of the Great Depression had more tangible results. Ignoring the pleas of the Treasury Department, Roosevelt embarked on an antidote to the depression, reluctantly abandoning his efforts to balance the budget and launching a $5 billion spending program in the spring of 1938, an effort to increase mass purchasing power. Business-oriented observers explained the recession and recovery in very different terms from the Keynesians. They argued the New Deal had been very hostile to business expansion in 1935–37, had encouraged massive strikes which had a negative impact on major industries such as automobiles, and had threatened massive antitrust legal attacks on big corporations. All those threats diminished sharply after 1938. For example, the antitrust efforts fizzled out without major cases. The CIO and AFL unions started battling each other more than corporations, and tax policy became more favorable to long-term growth.

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^[9]). To 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 its pre-war levels. The incorrect Keynesian prediction that a new depression would start after the war failed to take account of pent-up consumer demand as a result of the Depression and World War.

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 had 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, 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; in reality 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 have been challenged, most notably in the 1950s by Milton Friedman and Franco Modigliani.

Gold standard

Britain departed from the gold standard in September 1931, allowing the pound sterling to float internationally. The value of the pound then dropped significantly and British exports became cheaper. In April 1933, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102 prohibiting citizens of the U.S. from owning other-than-token amounts of gold and from using gold as money. Citizens were forced to sell all gold holdings (apart from jewelry) to the federal government at a price of $20.67 per ounce. In January 1934, Roosevelt raised the official price of gold to $35 per ounce, thereby devaluing the U.S. dollar by 41%.

Rearmament and recovery

The massive rearmament policies to counter the threat from Nazi Germany helped stimulate the economies in 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, masking the effects of 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. 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^{[citation needed]}. 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 the war. It would not be until the 1970s and the beginning of monetarism that this Keynesian approach was challenged, leading the way to neoliberalism.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Aftermath of World War I
• Business cycle
• Cities in the great depression
• Dust Bowl
• Economic collapse
• Gold as an investment
• Keynesian economics
• New Deal
• Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act
• Wall Street Crash of 1929

References

Wikipedia information about Great Depression This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Great Depression". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.