Stock Market Collapse In Australia During The Great Depression

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THE GREAT DEPRESSION I n 1929 the world threatened to fall apart when Wall Street “crashed”. By 1933 most people thought the end times were upon them as nearly all banks in America failed. Naturally, the rest of the world was dragged down too, including Australia. The NSW government states “The Depression, set off by the October 1929 Wall Street stock market crash, hit the New South Wales economy with great severity. Unemployment, already high at 10% in mid 1929, was 21% by mid 1930 and rising, hitting almost 32% in mid-1932”. The attached graph shows the percentage of unemployment from 4 countries deeply affected by the Depression. While domestic problems rose, international ones did so too. As shown on the map, Australia’s export prices dropped off …show more content…

To this day it is the worst financial crisis since the collapse of the stock market in the 1930s. Many people suggest that increased home loans are to blame for starting the problem. The first sign that a crisis was brewing occurred in 2006 when housing prices started to gradually fall. Realtors then celebrated as they thought the fluctuation meant the housing market was on its way to a more sustainable price range. Around the same time, banks started granting home loans that exceeded the price of most properties. This resulted in people not being able to pay off their loans, so many houses were repossessed by the banks. But because the market price had dropped on so many of the properties, banks started to suffer as well. Unemployment wasn’t as much of a major problem during the 2008 crisis as it was during the Great Depression. The provided graph shows a comparison between both times and their respective unemployment rates from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. National exports on the other hand were only getting better. The money earned from exports went up an additional 24.9% in the months leading up to July, and 9.6% for the whole