Cause Of The Great Depression In The United States

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Cause and Effect Essay Draft 2 CAUSES OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION IN THE US “WALL ST. IN PANIC AS STOCKS CRASH” was the headline in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle Newspaper on 24th of October, 1929 (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, n.d.). The Great Depression was a global financial meltdown that started in 1929 and went on for a period of ten years. It gets its name because no other crises lasted for this long. The aftermath of the crash resonated across the global financial market with the United States being its epicenter. The Great Depression was accelerated by many factors, the most important of them being The Wall Street Crash of 1929, Failure of the Banks in the United States and President Herbert Hoover’s policies. Firstly, during the 1920’s, the United…show more content…
He was a policy maker who believed in individualism since as he was a self-made man. Hoover’s policies covered the major sections of the economy namely federal spending, agriculture, wage policies, immigration and international trade. “Hoover inherited $3.1 billion for federal spending but it increased to $3.6 billion in 1931 and $4.6 billion in 1933. The budget deficits of 1931 and 1932 were 52.5% and 43.3% of total federal expenditures.” President Hoover expanded the reach of the Federal Farm Board, which was initiated in 1929. The aim behind the Federal Farm Board was to provide loans to farmers so that prices of crops could be maintained. Hoover used the Federal Farm Board to provide loans and subsidize costs of farming. However, this process of lending failed miserably as subsidies encouraged farmers to grow more which led to surpluses in farming produce. Surpluses implied that more was being produced than required and hence the prices fell drastically. Moreover, Hoover encouraged businesses not to reduce wages even during times of high unemployment. He argued that if wages were reduced, citizens would be unable to purchase the good beings produced. This was particularly disadvantageous for the businesses as prices of outputs were declining but labor wages were constant. Yet another area Hoover intervened was international trade. Hoover had made the existing policies more stringent reducing the number of immigrants to about fifteen percent of the original quota of visas. The motive behind this move was to protect the jobs of the American citizens against the immigrants who were willing to work at lower wages. Contemporaries argue that President Hoover’s policies were aggressive and showed his lack of confidence in the market forces and his willingness to use government power to fight
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