What picture was painted of the whole scenario?
All I was told is that the stock market crashed and things were bad but the government made it better.
But I read Rothbard's account of it. Helped me understand it more.
I'm interested in knowing how you were taught it.
The History books that I used in high school taught that it was caused by people buying on margin, to much credit, and some will touch on the banks not having enough money to back their loans and even fewer will so much as mention monetary policy.
Then almost all of them criticize Hoover for believing the market will sort itself out and then they all praise Roosevelt for his tireless work to inspire the people and how he had such a great 100 days and how brilliant/idealistic all of his projects and reforms were( the degree of his success depends on the book). Some don't even mention how revolutionary a change (for the worse) he brought about or that most of his projects failed. They all pretty much skirt around WWII bringing on a economic boom.
inquisitiveteenager: What picture was painted of the whole scenario? All I was told is that the stock market crashed and things were bad but the government made it better. But I read Rothbard's account of it. Helped me understand it more. I'm interested in knowing how you were taught it.
My teacher never used the history book and he was kind of a conservative guy so I got to hear the monetarist explanation, which was much nicer than the alternative explanation about how FDR saved us from capitalism.
existence is elsewhere
My recollection is very similar to the one listed previously. That is there was too much equity purchased on margin kicked off the Great Depression. All the while Hoover stood by with his Free Market Bias and the situation got progressively worse. It was the Great Hope Rosevelt who came in and through the power of his personality he put Americans to work and kept the economy going (Personally). Some of the books actually mention the Smoot Hawley Tariff and I have to give them credit for that as I give Rosevelt credit for getting rid of the tariff through a series of actions.
The country was of course saved by the economic expansion required by WW2. So the attack at Pearl Harbor was good to get the US into the war and the incineration of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were positive events for the Japanese folks.
Not a single one gives any explaination of how margin buying caused the crash or kicked off the Depression. Not one mentioned monetary policy in the 1920s. Some mention tight monetary policy in the 1930s. All mention WW2 as the solution.
So the solution is to worst easy money induced bust is to have a giant war killing millions resulting in the take over of 1/3 of the land mass and 1/3 of the worlds people by the likes of Stalin and Mao. The popular account of the Depression is truely depressing.
my macroeconomics teacher was a pretty free market- laissez faire guy, but even he got the Great Depression completely wrong. He never went so far to say that the New Deal was a great thing, but he recycled the talking point that Hoover ''did nothing" and followed a non-interventionist hands off approach.
do we get free cheezeburger in socielism?
I must've had a good text because mine did mention how similar hoover and FDR really were policy-wise but it later goes on to praise FDRs massive spending in WWII and government projects as the cause of America getting out of the depression.
It was caused by overproduction and solved by FDR and the New Deal.When I asked how paying people to dig holes and then paying others to fill them is good for the economy, I was told that mistakes were made, but overall the New Deal was a success.There's a lot of potential for revisionist history tackling this particular episode of history.
Sphairon:It was caused by overproduction and solved by FDR and the New Deal.
yes, i believe my high school history teaching was similar. there was overproduction, so FDR destroyed produce to increase prices.
hey, sometimes you gotta destroy wealth to create wealth.
I was taught that Hoover and industrialists caused the Depression, and that FDR was the man who saved us all from it.
I was also taught that the Articles of Confederation were "too weak," slavery and racist Southerners were the sole cause of the "Civil War," WWI and WWII were good, and that all historical events occur in a vacuum.
"La cuestión es siempre la misma: que el gobierno o el mercado. No hay tercera solución." -Ludwig von Mises
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