The Great Depression is the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression in history. The Great Depression was an economic collapse that impacted most of the world. It lasted for ten years, from 1929 to 1939. It was first evident in the United States when a major fall in stock prices occurred. The economic contagion began around September and led to the Wall Street stock market crash of October 24. Major causes of this economic shock were overproduction, stock crashes, and bank failures. It was triggered in large part by a sudden crash of the American stock market on October 29, a day widely known as Black Tuesday. The Depression caused many farmers to lose their farms. At the same time, years of over-cultivation and drought created the “Dust Bowl” in the Midwest, destroying agricultural production in a previously fertile region. The New Deal signed within 100 days by F.D.R helped end the Great Depression.
One major cause of the Great Depression in the U.S. was the crash of the stock market. A stock market, of a share market, is a stock exchange. When you buy stocks, you are buying a part of something, like a company. Now, you own part of that company. You can sell it to someone else, or you can keep it. The part of the company that you just bought is called a share. A person who owns a percentage of the stock has the ownership of the corporation proportional to their share. The shares form a stock. The stock of a corporation is partitioned into shares, the total of which are stated at the time of business formation. A stock exchange is an exchange (or bourse) where stockbrokers and traders can buy and sell shares (equity stock), bonds, and other securities. The purpose of a stock exchange is to facilitate the exchange of securities between buyers and sellers, thus providing a marketplace. The exchanges provide real-time trading information on the listed securities, facilitating price discovery.
The Great Depression affected all the people that were caught in it, but mainly affected the poor. The Great Depression is a symbol of the inequality between the poor and the rich of that time, as the rich accounted for all of the wealth, and the poor barely had any savings at all. For example, one of the types of poor people that were affected a lot during the Great Depression were the farmers. Since a lot of farmers lived in the Midwest, where the land was rich and fertile, they had to face the Dust Bowl, or the dust storms that occurred during the Great Depression. The dust storm wiped out their crops, and now their main source of money was gone. No crops, no business. Many of them were forced to leave and migrate to California. If I were a farmer, I would leave. I would rather live my past life behind for better resources to survive that have to stay and try to survive on little food or water. I would rather be safe than sorry.
Like after the Great Depression, the United States is also in a current recession from Covid-19 and the pandemic. During Covid, many companies laid workers off, and many people lost their jobs. They couldn’t get any money, and because of the raise in [rices, they couldn’t afford many things. Many borrowed money from the bank to pay off other loans, and then couldn’t pay off the loan from the bank. In order to pay debt, they had to go through bankruptcy. Also, when people wanted to go shopping, they didn’t buy the items they needed because the freight trains or planes importing the items from foreign countries were delayed due to the disease. Movie theaters and bowling alleys closed, with no one going. The economic shock during Covid was even worse than the financial crisis in 2008 in terms of GDP decline on an annual basis
The Great Depression was a really depressing and hard time for people all over the world. Stock markets crashed, people who were rich were now broke, and people had to go through a really hard time, maybe a harder time than they could handle. People lost their jobs, and the farmer that suffered the Dust Bowl also suffered from health problems that might have been triggered with all the dust. It destroyed agricultural production in a previously fertile region, and also forced many farmers to migrate west to California. The poor were badly affected, as they had absolutely nothing, while the rich might have had at least some savings to last them a while. This shows the inequality between the rich and the poor during that time. Overall, The Great Depression had devastating effects in countries both rich and poor. Personal income, tax revenue, profits and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50%. Unemployment in the U.S. rose to 25% and in some countries rose as high as 33%. The Great Depression had a serious bad impact on the world and the people living in it.
Comments