a. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff was signed into law by president Herbert Hoover and passed in 1930. It raised the United States tariffs to unreasonably high levels. Although the tariff made life hard, it did not cause the Great Depression. The Hawley-smoot Tariff became a symbol of the “beggar-thy-neighbor" policies, which were policies designed to improve a person’s own lot at the expense of others. These policies contributed to the decline of international trade. The original intent of the Act was to preserve mainly the agricultural jobs in America and protect the people from foreign agricultural imports. Calls for increased protection came in from industrial sector special interest groups, and a bill meant to provide relief for farmers became the reason to raise tariffs in all sectors of the economy. Congress had agreed to tariff levels that exceeded the high rates established by the Fordney-McCumber Act in 1922 and represented …show more content…
among the most protectionist tariffs in the United States history.
2. Federal Reserve Board
a. The Federal Reserve Board was created in 1914 by Congress. It is the governing body of the Federal Reserve System and is located in Washington D.C. There are seven members on the Board, who are nominated by the president of the United States and confirmed by the Senate. The Board of Governors is in charge of the Federal Reserve’s policy actions. It also supervises the activities of the Reserve Banks, appoints three of the nine directors of each Reserve Bank, approves the candidate for Bank president, and approves the Reserve Banks' annual budgets. The Board of Governors plays a major role in banking supervision and it publishes information on the Federal Reserve and the United States economy.
3. John Maynard Keynes’s economic theory
a.
John Maynard Keynes was a journalist, financer, and English economist, best known for his economic theories. Traditional economists believed that capitalism could recover by itself, the government does not interfere, during the Great Depression. The traditional economists argued that this way has always worked in times before. The economy was not getting any better, however. People started to turn to Marxist ideas. Marxism is the belief that the transition from capitalism to socialism is an inevitable part of the human society. John Maynard Keynes explained that capitalism could last under new conditions if certain traditional policies of the capitalist governments and banks were changed. The Keynesians claimed that the way to save capitalism was the government had to run a sufficiently large deficit to make up for any shortfall in spending by the private sector. As a result of this, unemployment would turn into “full employment”, which meant that there would be enough unemployment to keep trade unions in
check.