Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Matei Visan
Teodor Visan
The Great Depression
Preview
• Main Idea / Reading Focus
• The U.S. Economy in the 1920s
• Quick Facts: Causes of the 1929 Stock Market Crash
• The Depression Spreads
• The Worldwide Depression
• Quick Facts: Social Programs in Selected Countries
The Great Depression
Main Idea
In the late 1920s, an economic depression started in the United
States and quickly spread around the globe, causing great
hardship and creating ideal conditions for political unrest.
Reading Focus
• What happened to the U.S. economy during the 1920s?
• How did the Depression spread throughout the United States?
• How did the Depression affect the world?
The U.S. Economy in the 1920s
At War’s End Economic Growth
• U.S. world’s leading economic • American farms, factories
power at end of World War I supplied world with food,
• Position stronger during 1920s supplies to fight World War I
Credit
• Credit, arrangement where purchaser borrows money from lender
and agrees to pay it back over time
• At decade’s end many consumers reached limit of credit
• Could no longer afford to buy products that had kept U.S. economy
expanding
The Stock Market Crash
Fall of 1929
• Consumer spending slowed, sales suffered
• Many feared drop in stock prices
• Nervous investors began to sell off stocks
October 29
• Black Tuesday, 16 million shares of stock sold in one single day
• Few people wanted to buy stock, stock prices collapsed
• Investors who had borrowed to buy stocks forced to sell at loss
Market Crash
• Stock market crash ruined many investors
• Banks that had lent money to investors were also in deep financial trouble
• Devastating blow dealt to American industry
Sequence
Roosevelt Elected
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt elected president, 1932
• Increased federal government’s role in lives of Americans
• Pushed forward New Deal, program to fight Great Depression
New Deal
• Provided government spending to help start economic recovery
• Public works programs to provide jobs, government money for welfare, relief
• New regulations to reform, protect stock market, banking system
New Economic Theories
• Bibliography:
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interwar_period
• http://www.sparknotes.com/history/european/interwaryea
rs/summary/
• https://www.historytoday.com/archive/period/interwar-
period
• https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-interwar-years-
timeline-society-economies.html