Saturday, May 2, 2015

Great Depression

Welcome to the Great Depression Week here at OPOD. We will be looking at pictures from that most unfortunate decade of the 1930's. It actually started in 1929 with the crash of the stock market. The stock market crash quickly led to bank failures and bank runs, where people learned that they had lost all their savings. This resulted in both loss of credit and individuals and businesses not able to access their bank accounts. This quickly led to business failures and unemployment, and overall desperate conditions.

What gets me is the striking contrasts between the 1920's and 1930's. The people in the 20's acted as if there was absolutely no way anything could go wrong. Most were caught completely off guard by the collapse and the decade of misery that follows. 

The concerning thing is that most people who lived through the depression have passed on, and this lesson of history has been pretty much forgotten.


  1. That is the best general description of the terrible result of this country's irresponsible financial behavior in the latter 20's. There seemed to be a lot of warning from the financial community but no one was listening.

    Today, the Fed is watching and making changes as we go but I wonder about our position with the Fed Chairman representing the policies of the sitting president.

  2. Hoy es 02/ Mayo/ 2015, te escribo desde Chile y me parece que soy tu "última adquisición"al menos en: "Seguidores".-
    ¿Conversemos de vez en cuando? Acá estamos en Otoño,
    y como es lógico, con desastres naturales continuos. Bueno, en todo el mundo, naturalmente!
    Mi correo:

  3. I read something the other day in a British newspaper about the world-wide Depression being caused by the American stock market crash and the failure of the American banks. I doubt that it was quite that simple. I'm sure there was plenty of warning on both sides of the pond, had anybody been paying enough attention. I think our fearless leader summed it up best in his introduction to the 1920s, when he said something like the American bankers not paying enough attention to the consequences of their banking policies. The rest of he world assumed we knew what we were doing, and we didn't. That cost the whole world very dearly, and led to WW II and its agonies.

  4. Although I have learned over the years to take a lot of my family history with a "dose of salts" my father's mother said the Depression started in Australia, and that was why they came to America. For all the good it did, obviously.