Talk:Great Depression

The Great depression began in the ashes of World War I and was a result of the economic dislocation that occurred in first in Germany in 1919 and then throughout Europe in the 1920s. As the European economies began to fail and Russia turned to Communism the Great Depression deepened until the overly speculated US Stockmarket crashed. This article appears to be Americano-centric or xenophobic when it fails to discuss the global causes of the Great Depression. The US economy could have crashed by itself and things would have been different. There were important factors in the World that lead all of the people of the planet to change their ways of governance and economic structure. This took place from 1919 to 1939. The US reaction saved our country from communism by adopting a very strong socialist approach instead. People don't understand these things because they have been brainwashed by capitalist rhetoric that is just as bad as the Communist rhretoric.

Archives

Talk:Great Depression/Archive 1 Talk:Great Depression/Archive 2

Business POV

The business section is I point you to the current excerpt: "passage of the G.I. bill... --one of the best laws Congress has ever passed." There are more, less blatant examples as well. 65.68.75.175 03:13, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Good point. I chopped out most of the POV. Rjensen 03:23, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Contradiction

I will probably do 90% of this wrong, but this bugs me so much I need to have it looked into :)

The first sentence and the second paragraph on "Popular misconceptions" contradict each other: The first sentence reads,"The Great Depression was a worldwide economic downturn which started in October of 1929 and lasted through most of the 1930s." The first sentence of "Popular misconceptions" says the opposite and denies that. It reads,"There is a popular misconception that the Great Depression began immediately after the Stock Market Crash in October of 1929," and later states that,"In the autumn of 1930, the Stock Market began its steady decline and the Great Depression began in earnest."

According to the "Popular misconceptions" paragraph the first sentence should read as follows: "The Great Depression was a worldwide economic downturn which started in Autumn of 1930 and lasted through most of the 1930s."

Shouldn't Autumn be capitalized in "Popular misconceptions" also?

Causes of the Great Depression

Hey, this is Bfissa, and I just added the "Merge" tag to add merge with Causes of the Great Depression. I think that these two articles are too similar to be separate, and I know this article is long, but if we were to organize it well, I think that it would improve these articles to be the same. But that's what I think... could we maybe have a survey on it?

Survey

you*Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

• Support For reasons stated above. --Bfissa 20:01, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose we have two very long articles on distinct topics. One covers social and economic conditions all over the world for a decade, the other discusses many rather complex ideas in economic theory. Rjensen 08:41, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose as per Rjensen. --Kimon^talk 15:45, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
• support for reasons already stated.The juggsd86 19:50, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
• Quick Comment I don't feel that these articles are on very different topics, they are both fall under the category of "The Great Depression" and I think if they are on different parts of that, we should arrange them as such in the new article. --Bfissa 22:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose as per Rjensen's reasoning --JohnCub 23:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Seeing how the overall view is "opposse", I withdraw my request and will remove the merge banners. --Bfissa 00:25, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Effects by country

Under 'effects' pretty much every country with a summary has a claim that the depression was particularly bad there. This can't possibly be true for every country... Also, the countries that don't have summaries need them. I'll try and get round to this myself, but if anyone else feels like it...

Do we really need to have a summary for every. single. country.? Even if we do, there should be a summary at the top of the effects collum that describes the general effects. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.109.174.11 (talk) 23:08, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, I'm not sure why there is a 'Responses in the US' section and nothing about responses anywhere else, especially considering that the New Deal was fairly mild reform compared to what happened in some other countries. Since there are already pages on the New Deal, recession of 1937 etc, I suggest drastic trimming of this section, and adding stuff on responses to the Depression in other countries. --Helenalex 05:02, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

On second thoughts, 'effects' would probably work better as a summary, with links to the 'the depression in (country)' pages. Practically every country could be summed up as 'the government tried conventional economic remedies to deal with the collapse of the economy, these didn't work, unemployment reached critical levels, there was rioting and a rise in support for extreme left wing / right wing / left and right wing groups'. There's no reason why this couldn't be summed up in a paragraph or two, perhaps with examples from particular countries. --Helenalex 05:14, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I think ideally the "Great Depression" text should be general and international in scope, while a new "the great depression in the United States" article should be created for specific topics like for example the New Deal and US federal reserve policy. And I agree that a more comparative text about the effects in the different countries would be helpful (focussing on similarities and differences among the affected countries). But there's not much material yet to base such a comparative text on, as most of the 'effects by country' texts are quite limited so far. --JJWitte 17 April 2007

Money as Debt movie

I added a link to movie called "Money as Debt" which leads up to explaining the cause of the Great Depression in the almost exactly middle. Boldly, I might add, per policy here. But I expect it to be deleted. But I think it has merit. Can we discuss it's relevance. Nastajus 04:30, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Um, it's black tuesday. Not black thursday. it's kind of sad that it hadn't been discovered sooner.

Enter thoughts: "Money as Debt" topic should be considered at length, the importance of the ratio of Debt to Currency in circulation is a reliable key indicator of fiscal health, which the FED and the Government ignored in the late 20's as well as the past 10 years.

Irrelevant link

I have removed a link to "Depression furniture" on grounds that the furniture itself, although attractive, has nothing to add about the nature of the Great Depression. That it is a commercial link to an enterprise intended to sell antiques would not be troublesome if there were some educational value to it... but the main article is not one on styles of material goods popular during the time, including furniture.

Vandalism

There's been some more vandalism on the article (in the links area especially), so could someone more learned in things Wikipedia revert it somehow? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.196.47.105 (talk) 02:49, August 30, 2007 (UTC)

vandalism

The current version, as of 04:47, 15 October 2007, has been changed from the last version to read "Lurching Downward Into Crap", rather than "Lurching Downward". I tried to undo this, but I don't have the authority. So the person who made this edit has authority????? If this was the wikipedia article for "pedophilia" or "occult nazism" etc., this might be expected. But as it is, this really detracts from wikipedia's credibility. How can, or why is this happening to this article? 208.120.68.138 07:09, 15 October 2007 (UTC) JD

Thank you for posting here; you did exactly the right thing, and another editor fixed the problem (although it took a couple of hours). Yes, the article can't be edited by anonymous IP addresses (non-registered editors), because it's semi-protected (I added an icon to the top of the article, which makes that clearer). I've also posted a warning to the registered editor who vandalized the page.

There are a lot of benefits to being a registered editor, besides being able to revert vandalism on semi-protected pages; why don't you take a look at Wikipedia:Why create an account?. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:47, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

"Banking Caused the Great Depression" Problems

The Headline of the banking section is a little too opinionated. Banks make money by giving loans to business. The banks obviously were worried about surviving themselves. Restictions on branch banking could be one reason banks did not give out loans to businesses. Allowing money to flow more freely between regions could have possibly reduced the domino effect of bank disasters. One could argue that restrictions on branch banking ultimately came from the banks themselves. The counter arguement would be that since we were employing "government intervention" measures in the first place; Banks inability or resistance to branch would have been a good place to intervene. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Newjohngalt (talk • contribs) 16:19, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Bankers caused the Great Depression?

Has anyone noticed this paragraph? Considering the impressive display of economic thought that went into the rest of--and particularly the earlier sections of--this article, this ridiculous paragraph is less a smack in the face to earlier editors than just a complete mindfucking defy-nition of logic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.120.85.210 (talk) 22:19, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Essentially it's true. Not the country bankers, but the top 7-8 bankers who ran the Federal Reserve pretty much caused it with their monetary policies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.115.230.118 (talk) 08:40, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Nazi party and the depression

although the Wall Street crash was huge it was not inevitable that it should lead to a lasting recession as few ordinary Americans bought shares. However there was another consideration. The world was gripped by deflation after 1929. In 1930 Heinrich Brüning, became chancellor of Germany. A former gunnery officer and fiscal expert of almost monastic habits, he had helped demobilised soldiers find work after the war. This led to Prussian Minister of Welfare and leader of the Christian trade unions, Adam Stegerwald, making him the unions’ chief executive. The lower ranks of the civil service were filled almost entirely by ex-servicemen. In 1930 Brüning told them that his chief aim as Chancellor was to liberate Germany from paying war reparations and foreign debt. In order to achieve this all wage and salary increases since 1927 would have to be eliminated and credit tightened in order to enable German exports to conquer foreign markets. Naturally as Germany was a strong country – the largest exporter in the world in 1931, with a mountain of cash in the Reichsbank – when she closed down her home market and diverted all her energies into exports her policy affected nations everywhere.86.167.183.54 (talk) 20:57, 15 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.167.183.54 (talk) 20:53, 15 October 2008 (UTC) I thought that when the Nazi party was elected into power they got rid of the reparations in the Treaty of Versailles? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.70.26.206 (talk) 04:00, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Same here, I may be wrong but remember that Germany never repaid the reparations. Codik 17:13, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Checked. Per Lausanne Conference of 1932 the reparations were suspended in 1932 (meaning that Germany repaid only 1/8th of the reparations). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Codik (talk • contribs) 17:18, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

ALSO< COULD IT FOCUS MORE ON THE UNITED STATES SINCE THE U.S IS IMPORTANT

---

YES, exactly. and what gives with an entire section dedicated to Ben Barnanke's collosal lies claiming that leaving the gold standard was the reason they got out of the depression ?! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.71.207.28 (talk) 18:17, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Jews

Didn't the immigration of Jews into Europe have part in the cause of the depression? 72.189.156.10 (talk) 01:32, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Political Consequences

The political consequences of the Great Depression were that Hayek got the Nobel forty years or so later? WTF. Good thing this article doesn't waste space on tangential trivialities like the rise of Hitler and the "imperial presidency" in the US. --dsws (talk) 05:34, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

The current Great Depression

This is just a discussion placeholder. But it will soon be a current event. The financial markets are unstable as the credit crisis is expanding daily. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.130.213.206 (talk) 07:09, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

That sort of Chicken Little talk is foolish and insane if you look at any of the signs of what a "Great Depression" is. The foolishness of people seems to have no bounds. No part of the Western World is even NEAR a Depression. 69.245.80.218 (talk) 14:43, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

• Agreed. That said I have heard media coverage of economists making statements on how the current recession could become a depression. It might be worth noting- with sources, of course - in the "Other depressions" section. (BTW although my IP number looks similar, I am not connected to any of the IPs on this thread) 68.146.41.232 (talk) 15:08, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

You'll eat those words soon enough. Fact is the overwhelming cause of the GD was speculation on the stock market and people buying on margin. It was when the brokerage houses made margin calls that things fell apart and 1/3 of the perceived wealth evaporated. Checks and balances were put in place to limit the amount people can go on margin since then by the SEC. But....remember all the advertisements in the 90's about taking a 2nd mortgage out on your house at 150% of it's value. That is ,in essence, going out on margin in real estate. The foreclosure notice is the margin call. This is happening RIGHT NOW. Remember all the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae hocus pocus of late? The sub-prime mortgage debacle? And don't even give me "Citation Needed" crap as all this is Q.E.D. for anyone with half a brain. And with as highly politicized as the term "Depression" is it won't be referred to as such until we are about 6 mos into one. Recession is an oversupply of goods. Depression is an under supply of money to purchase said goods. Mix Recession with a catastrophic monetary event such as failure of markets be they stock or real estate and you have the proper recipe for a Depression. 75.135.151.176 (talk) 23:50, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Recommendation to replace "expounded"

It seems to me "expounded" in the current context is incorrect and should be replaced with "exacerbated" or "compounded".

Regards,

--Rick Read (talk) 15:11, 15 March 2008 (UTC) Rick Read (new registered user)

October 29

In the article it's written that October 29 is also known as Black Tuesday, but that was October 24. The right name is Black Thursday. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.215.6.84 (talk) 00:54, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

…I would like to agree a little from the topic of Jews. I allways thought that the value of the economy was in fault mostly towards the depression. Great now i have to explane myself. Could a depression be caused by the "Most of One Thing and Not Enough of The Other". Help me out here,yes i enjoy saving my Money in a Box,no matter how big it is. I will continnue to save money ,is it because i'm not sure of something,Partly. Who else feels this way. If there is more and more people entering a Place then there should be a recomendation of it. Here is where it get's scarce (A Recomendation Of It) Here is Ellis Island it is in fact the 1920's. Affiliation of Ellis Island and the rest of the land availability wich now may consist of The United States. Asurity who is sure of what. Trust who is trusting who. The Value of Concept,Continue to vote. The soup line is only so big and or long,Big meaning in responce,It is a big deal now the hole of it is recognized. The hole of a Country is in custom. Conservaty,start with ? perhaps to gain trust. And for now what is missing $. $ is a tool unfortunetly it is not used correctly.

An interseting word obolish-ment 4:05p.m.e.s.t. keep saving no-one else is atleast there's nothing to show for it,though there is the form of economics. here take my car and make some money with it and pay me later, o hello how's this vehicle Do not touch untrust worthy right from the get go.Baloni. It's only money just if when it's extreemingly new when making an airplane out of it try not to aim it in another's eye 4:09David George DeLancey (talk) 21:09, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

…Here is another form of Depression though usual, One would have to fend for them selfs, or they realy had to fend for them selfs, Representation it's just the beginingand through time WOW WAR how the heck did a look out alright lets you there get out of here funny how that sounds is that brit being considerate perhaps when they achief mum we shall see another thats something else there yes indeed it is mum.

Then all hell breaks loose now theres extreemingly now means of controll isay there we'll never recover it's abolishment i say and then after the resolves i mean the revolution things start over again.

And in the distance say old chap what the devil ever happened, well i say the form was a takin over wsay what the Bloody government ,yes yes indeed i see well.

and then there's the effected much after within realisation much of will discribe for fending and sorting through the well established Governs of the time and still no remorse.

Till; well next for another fine episode ya i care deleete if you want though i still care.6:28 P.M. E.S.T. 3-25-2008 22-15-20-5 forDavid George DeLancey (talk) 22:28, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

The great depression. where did all the money go. They tried to save it. They came and demolished it. The new deal was to reform it.

The State Of New York at one time agreed to manufacture money and or currency and Build a Building to do so to do so is in relation of a controlled atmosphere to distribute to collect the hold.

A Form of Currency in the mid 1700's was just what it meant a Form.

When this was dimolished through the Representatives of New York which then Carried the effect elsewhere through the representations of the newspaper that ended democracy's establishment.DeMocracy was an Idea an Attempt And a Thought within a Peoples To Conduct something of and with effort, perhaps if it was even recognised as a Democracy it was for the also continuance of it and towards the rebuplic wich then could of meant a People in form as of The republic has a democracy, representation of the sectioned People of New York No They Do Not. This is The Livingston and DeLancey factions or Factioned Fuids. and indefinetly over a Lotery for a College.

Meanwhile a Representation became of a grouping perhaps to decline there controll in wich was eventually truly noticed had become to much for Mr. Livingston rather in meant or not to some degree which by standard is a Law the Peoples were uniteing to some other obidience he rather not be effect of or realise would concure. Eventually the organised Sons Of Liberty established through men of New York and is Set some how in history taht the DeLancey Faction had amongst others set up and or Organised it, Perhaps to have some nuetral police ordinance of the erea New York.

Thus now with a Possible Helping through the Organised brigades to establish transport and acomidations to other Colonies then was the terming to set up Correspondence and would at the start be ofcourse a committee for a Cooffee house was a Liquor Parlor and the Conference to strong to be nominated well perhaps became a committee.

This happened when the feamale ladies Women of the erea's and or Province or Colonie and or Town through time different meanings servive. And during this time was the more comfortable tallent of Coffee House and then the Respect of the Gentelmen.

Till next time; 6:49 P.M. E.S.T.David George DeLancey (talk) 22:49, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Bias towards Gold Standard

It seems that the section about keynesian models and the gold standard was written by some ron paul advocates... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.36.47.135 (talk) 00:10, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

"The Great Slump"

"The Great Depression(also known in the United States as the Great Slump)"

Okay, no, not really. I live in the US and I have only heard one person use the term "The Great Slump" to describe the Great Depression and that was my 5th grade history teacher telling us the "The Great Slump" was an alternative, but not widely used name, for The Great Depression. I'm going to rephrase that to say (Also known as "The Great Slump), m'kay? Broadway4life155 (talk) 03:10, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I removed the reference to "Great Slump" from the intro. It's universally known as "The Great Depression". The parenthetical phrase you mention above had a footnote to an article that used the term "Slump" a couple of times - and it wasn't convincing because "Crash" and "Depression" were more used - but in any case there was no citation demonstrating that it's also known as "the Great Slump". Tempshill (talk) 18:45, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Other Great Depressions?

Where can i find infomation about the Great Depression of 1870's when Britain lost its monoply on trade... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.152.228.190 (talk) 18:27, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

SVG image to replace JPG (Gdp20-40.jpg)

A request was made to replace a low-resolution image of a plot of real GDP. I have created and uploaded such a file. The SVG image is available here: Real GDP 1920-1940

The earlier JPG image is linked to several pages. I would be grateful if someone else could update these links to the SVG file.

Cassegrain (talk) 07:02, 9 June 2008 (UTC)Cassegrain

Problem with Unemployment statistics for Australia

Under the Australia subheading it is stated that unemployment in Australia was 32% in 1932. In the Australian main article the figure is 29% for the same year. Could someone check this. My guess is that 32% is a typo as the year is 1932 and the correct figure is 29% but that assumption is not based on historical knowledge.61.68.129.120 (talk) 10:19, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Just had a look at the rest of the Australia main article and the correct figure is 29%. Could someone please change that.61.68.129.120 (talk) 10:26, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Heads up

Wikipedia:Requests for page protection - Never hurts to ask. Anyone got any arguments against a temporary semi-protection? MrZaius^talk 15:51, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

The most important?

In the opening paragraph, this article makes reference to the Great Depression being the most important economic downturn in world history. Really? Maybe the scope you're using to determine is a little too, uhm, narrow. Not to mention making a statement like "It is used as benchmark in the 21st century on how far an economy could possibly fall". Really? By who? Since when? How do you "use" a benchmark? Whose to say whether an economy "falls" or rather "reaches new heights of tumult!"? Wouldn't a stage in human history like, the aftermath of the Toba event qualify as a much, much more dire economic situation? Furthermore, "world history" or "recorded history"? World history could literally mean before the use of money, or even before the use of bartering or "value"/"worth" as a concept, so maybe we should say, "Second only to the Pre-cambrian era in making us realize we're all going to die and be remembered for our receipts, bank statements, and bills-in-need-of-paying. Or does "world history" mean "history of Anglo-Saxon people using green money"? If there's further language in here like this, I'd expect rewrites/deletes for all of it. Sigh. I give up. 24.3.14.157 (talk) 10:52, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

it's a pretty important downturn---this weeks media talk a lot about it!--, and no expert has made the case for downturn XYZ being more important, which is what is required to change the statement. Rjensen (talk) 12:05, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Me thinks someone just left out the word "modern" - I'll fix at least this one instance. MrZaius^talk 16:52, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, Rjensen, it's a' pretty important downturn. And yeah, the media does talk a lot about it now. But we don't change a for the just because it's important. And we DEFINITELY don't make articles inaccurate just because it's a hot button issue. 24.3.14.157 (talk) 21:39, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Worldview

Sections like "Debt" should be expanded or rewritten to contain sourced documentation demonstrating the impact of both private and public debt in the rest of the world. The Canada and South Africa articles, for a start, both imply the existence of sources that can be used for those ends. A focus on America may be warranted, but the complete absence of coverage of the rest of the world seems a touch odd. This issue may be present elsewhere in the article, as well. MrZaius^talk 04:27, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Cascade and Interlocking

Two (similar) concepts which facilitate discussion and exposition of the Great Depression are cascade and interlocking. That processes run out of control, or are self feeding. And often salience is aggregate in nature - several elements combine or follow each other to produce an effect. Blablablob (talk) 22:16, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

WWII and unemployment

This needs to be cleaned up for accuracy. It greatly oversimplifies real world economics. Blablablob (talk) 22:33, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

The unemployment problem was not solved until the post-World War II decontrolling of the command wartime economy in 1946. The advent of World War II, when about 12 million men were drafted into the army and taken out of the labor market, was not a true long-term "solution" to massive unemployment in the civilian marketplace, nor did it create real wealth for the masses with consumer goods. Multiple war goods production programs reduced unemployment technically to under 2% and brought in millions of new workers to the labor markets, but this was strictly for the purpose of making war goods (armaments), which only benefited the war-making sector of the economy.

economics is about what people wanted, and Americans REALLY wanted to win that war with minimal deaths. That means planes, tanks, ships, ammo. They worked very hard to do so, and produced more civilian goods for themselves in the process. The idea that people should instead have produced what some antiwar theorist believes is best for them is POV, as preached by a few libertarians like Higgs. Rjensen (talk) 21:05, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

John Steele Gordon on the causes of the Great Depression

Hi, I am presently providing (or trying to provide) references for the article on the Great Crash of 1929 and I came across this audio tidbit from Gordon on NPR. I am a new user so I did not include the tidbit in the Great Crash because I am not sophisticated enough to know whether it belongs in that article. But maybe it belongs here: The Great Crash did not cause the Great Depression "at all... The Crash and the Depression were effects of the same process that was going on in the economy."

click on the real media link at this webpage: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1065948

Best regards Johndoeemail (talk) 02:21, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Marxist Jargon

It's fine to have the Marxist POV mentioned, as it is indeed a major historical POV, but it really needs to be made comprhensible to the laymen as per wiki guidlines. As it is written the paragraph is steeped in jargon.

Third, there is the Marxist critique of political economy. This emphasizes contradictions within capital itself (which is viewed as a social relation involving the appropriation of surplus value) as giving rise to an inherently unbalanced dynamic of accumulation resulting in an overaccumulation of capital, culminating in periodic crises of devaluation of capital. The origin of crisis is thus located firmly in the sphere of production, though economic crisis can be aggravated by problems of disproportionality between spheres of production and the underconsumption of the masses.

Wha...wha...what? Brentt (talk) 06:59, 2 October 2008 (UTC)