Great Depression 1920-1930

The Great Depression and the Crash of 1929

The Great Depression of the 1920-1930s was perhaps one of the most marked events in the history of mankind. Very few incidents have ever had such a huge impact on not only nations and its institutions but also the common man. Of course there have been natural calamities and invasions but nothing like the Depression. Also there have been depressions earlier but never to this extent or of this intensity. What marked this depression from any other was perhaps its raging spread across the whole world. Two of the greatest epicenters of the depression were Germany and the US.

There are several views as to how the Depression came about, how it could have been corrected and how it could have been prevented.

The Great Crash generally refers to the stock market crash (in America - Wall Street) on 29 October, 1929. It started on Thursday, 23 October when just before the 3:00 pm bell rang, the stock prices instantly fell. For the following week stocks fell lower and faster and changed hands so fast, the machines that kept track of these stocks seemed unable to cope up with the activity. All along while President Herbert Hoover reassured the people of America that the nation was “on a sound and prosperous basis”, more panic spread and because the uncertainty and risk was rising, people wanted their money back. In all this frenzy the United States Securities Regulation agencies could have shut down the market but they feared that would only spread more fear and could have led to a violent display of the emotions of the public. Finally came Black Tuesday (29 October, 1929) by when the markets had most certainly crashed and around $25 billion ( $319 billion in today's dollars) and 15,000 miles of ticker tape paper had been lost. Stocks continued to fall till 13 November, 1929. The depression had set in by then and had already started spreading in great intensity to the rest of the

No other serious disasters occurred with the exception of the crash of 1987. However, around 2007, the recession that had its roots in America, cropped up and affected the whole world. India, luckily was in a position to tackle the situation and was not as devastated by the recession as certain other countries were.

To this day the Great Depression is considered as one of the longest and deepest depressions in the history of mankind. Several lessons were learnt from it and many new measures were adopted to prevent this sort of a catastrophe to happen once again. However, if any sort of an economic outburst is destined to happen, it probably will. Any sort of policy, intervention, invisible hand or knowledge will not be able to prevent it. We can only hope to be prepared to face something like this, with a brave face, when it comes in the