THE GREAT DEPRESSION 1923: CAUSE FOR THE ORIGIN OF A PHENOMENON CALLED MACROECONOMICS

In economics, depression involves sustained, long-term downturn economic activity. While recession is seen as a part of a normal business cycle, depression is a sustained recession. It is characterized by abnormal increase in unemployment, falls in the availability of credit, shrinking output and investment, numerous bankruptcies, reduced amounts of trade and commerce, as well as highly volatile relative currency value fluctuations, mostly devaluations.
In 1929, the greatest of all depressions called The Great Depression is the most severe that caused a tremendous wipeout of huge money in most economies around the world. It was the longest and most wide spread depression in the history of US. So what caused the great depression?

Wall Street Stock Market Crash. One of the most severe stock market crashes in the history of US was the one that occured in October 1922 to that event, after a long time of wealth and excess money in the system, a lot of speculators came into rise. People just buy a lot of stocks based solely on speculation of gains due to the continued increase in stock prices that reached peak levels. They were even borrowing money just to buy stocks. However, panic among investors started and a lot them began selling and dumping their shares. In the financial world, this is called bubble burst. A lot of bankers met before to discuss how can they tame investors fear. Some of them bid and purchased huge blocks of shares to pump up stock prices and bring back investors confidence in the stock market. Unfortunately, this tactic just temporarily resolved the problem. Stocks prices continued to fall and by the close of market on October 29, 1929, $30 billion worth of stocks were wiped out in just 1 week.
Debt Deflation. Since a lot of people borrowed money which they used to buy stocks prior to the stock market crash of 1929, there was a limited supply of money circulating in the economic system after the crash happened. This fact led to the dry up of availability of loans for business owners. They can no longer borrow money in banks to expand their business operations and cover their costs. As a result, a lot of companies declared bankruptcies and laid off a lot of their employees causing a huge increase in unemployment rate in most economies. Bank failures. With the debt deflation, a lot of banks closed down. Bank deposits were uninsured and so as these banks shut down, a lot of people lost their savings. Those banks who survived were too cautious to lend new loans to businesses. This aggravated the situation leading to less and less expenditures thereby forcing more and more companies to close down which added to the mounting unemployment problem. Depressed consumer buying. With the unemployment rate kept on rising, more and more people hold to their dear cash and just dont want to spend. This exacerbated the situation as business deals and transactions continued to dry causing businesses to lose profits and eventually close down.

Inaction by the FED. The FED or Federal Reserve is the Central Bank of the US. It is considered as one of the most powerful among central banks around the world. The inaction by the FED contributed to the Great Depression. By not acting on the situation, the FED allowed the money supply in the system to shrink and did not even bother to bail out huge banks that failed. One of these banks was New York Bank of the United States which produced panic and bank runs among local and small banks. Gold standard. One of the reasons why the FED did not act to limit the decline in money supply was the regulation called gold standard. Back then, the amount of credit issued by the FED should be backed up by gold. By the late 1920s, just before the stock market crash began, the FED already hit its maximum allowable credit that could be backed up by the gold in its possession. Since the FED had hit its limit on allowable credit, any reduction in gold in its vaults had to be accompanied by a greater reduction in credit. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. As business began failing, the US government created theSmoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930 to help protect American companies. Unfortunately, this act aggravated the depression by seriously reducing the foreign trades between the US and other countries imposing high imports taxes. Drought in the Dust Bowl Years. There was a drought that occured in the Mississippi Valley in the 1930s that exacerbated the situation of the Great Depression. This pushed a lot of farmers to cultivate more despite the high costs of soil conservation. Unfortunately, since there was a Great Depression happening at that time, they ended up selling their farm lands.