Causes Of The Great Depression Essay

The causes of the Great Depression This economic disaster was not caused by one factor but a number of related factors. Historians and economists have compiled a large list of the agents of The Great Depression, but most of them agree on the following as the main causes.
The stock market crash of 1929 In the 1920’s, the United States Stock market was the subject of rapid expansion that peaked in 1929. During this period, “wild speculation and weak regulatory frameworks were the characteristics of the bourse” (Gunderson, 16). By 1929, unemployment had risen due to decreasing production leaving much of the stock with inflated values. This caused the market to collapse aided in part by a struggling agricultural sector, the proliferation of …show more content…
This culminated in a panic gripping the masses of investors who proceeded to trade more than 12.894 million shares on October 24th, 1929 also known as Black Thursday. Investors and large banks tried to remedy the situation by purchasing large amounts of stock easing the economy out of free fall. However, the same returned again the next day eventually leading to Black Tuesday on October 28th when 16million plus shares were traded. On this day, thousands of investors were completely wiped out, and billions of dollars lost. The events of 1929 were just the beginning of a series of events that combined later to compound into the Great Depression. By 1933, almost a third of America’s workforce was out of their jobs, and nearly half of America’s banks had …show more content…
This meant even less money to save a situation that rendered banks redundant and even useless. Without their deposits, financial institutions were unable to operate and eventually forces to close down. In the early 1920’, they failed at a rate of 60 to 75 per year, but the number grew ten-fold to 744 in first two-thirds of 1930 alone. On total, it is estimated that almost 9000 banks failed during The Great Depression (Knoop, 253). With the closures, many people lost their life savings aggravating an already dire financial

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