Banks During The Great Depression

The Great Depression was the longest-lasting and most sever depression experienced by the Industrialized western world. It all began on October of 1929, when the stock market crashed. This caused the Wall Street to start to panic and even wiped out many investors as they began to dump all of the shares that they had owned (History.com). People however were not just getting rid of all of their stocks, but they were also starting to become unemployed. This was because many businesses could not afford to pay all of their workers when the banks started to close. The banks had to start closing because a lot of the money that they had was invested into the stock market to help them make more money. But with the unexpected crash, they had lost most
of their money. This made people very angry because they wanted to withdraw their money, but they couldn't because of the banks failures. I believe that it was more severe and was able to last longer than any other economic downturn because of how unexpected it was. Nobody was prepared for this type of thing to happen, so when it occurred there was not really a good plan to help everyone. They did try a few things to try and protect their domestic production by imposing tariffs and raising existing ones. The effect of these restrictive measures was to greatly reduce the volume of international trade. But even this was not enough because of the impact it had on everyone.

Sources:
History.com Staff. "The Great Depression." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2009. Web. 11 Apr. 2017. .