Impact of the Great Depression

Most everyone has at least heard of the Great Depression that hit America by storm in the early twentieth century. Even though people are taught about the Great Depression, I personally think that a lot of people do not understand the severity that it caused and the livelihoods that it forever changed. The Great Depression, which lasted over a period of ten years, resulted in a lot of heartache for many nations worldwide (Fraser, 2010). As for the United States, the worst of the Great Depression harbored between 1929 through 1933 (Fraser, 2010). The Great Depression went down into history as being the worst traumatic economic moment for the United States (Paul Evans). It is still recognized for being the longest and severe depression that has ever been experienced by the Western hemisphere (Romer). The Great Depression originated in the United States causing drastic declines in output, severe unemployment, and heightened deflation in almost every country of the world (Romer). To this day economist and historians are still trying to analyze what really happened in the quake of the Great Depression, along with understanding the true underlying causes that created this grave crisis (Fraser, 2010). Even though the Great Depression will be forever stamped in history books as the economic meltdown of the twentieth century, we as Americans can learn to oversee and conquer what lies before us by understanding what put us in that dark place to begin with. The following depicts and analyzes the four main causes that economist believe lead to the demise of the Great Depression which are, the Stock market crash, banking panics and monetary contradiction, the gold standard, and international lending and trade (Bernstein).
People thank declines in consumer demand, financial panics, along with misguided government policies to the dismay of the drastic decline of output. The decline of economic output was mainly due to a decline in aggregate demand (Bernstein). One of the main