The Great Depression in the US was an unexpected economic and social shock for the country, which gave birth to new categories of poverty, unemployment, crime and other derivatives of social tension. The state and its citizens were all the more unprepared for it because the previous stage since 1923 Was considered at that time a period of prosperity and violent economic growth. This rapid and seemingly cloudless development was replaced in 1929 by a decline for the United States. The depression began already in August 1929, when production indicators began to decline slowly across the country. However, then this economic slowdown did not receive proper attention. The absolute starting point of such a phenomenon as the Great Depression in the United States is stock market crash, when stock exchanges' shares on the domestic, and later on the international market, began to fall catastrophically. The beginning of this fall - October 24, 1929 - was later called by Americans "black Thursday". October 29, the stock market crash of Wall Street. Among the reasons for this phenomenon, modern economists call a combination of factors, including overproduction of consumer goods and the formation of too much surplus, capitalist investments in production beyond any need (the so-called soap bubble), a sharp increase in population, a shortage of money supply, and so on.
Years of the Great Depression
The ensuing crisis embraced all spheres of state and public life. He brought catastrophic damage to the country's economy. Construction, heavy industry, agricultural industry and a number of other industries were almost completely stopped. The decline and widespread decline in production was accompanied by massive layoffs, reaching tens of thousands a week. By 1932, 25% of able-bodied citizens had become unemployed, not to mention the total number. Under such conditions, of course, wages also fell, as well as social guarantees in the country. The fall in demand for farm products led to their massive ruin: about one million farms were affected. The fall of the economy and the growth of social tension continued until 1932, when the government of Herbert Hoover was reelected , unable to cope with the complex challenge. His successor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, at the very beginning of his reign, announced a new state policy called the New Deal. After that, the Great Depression in the US went into decline.
New Deal
This program provided for a number of anti-crisis measures connected with a certain departure from liberal positions and strengthening of the state's role in the economy and production. The new course was manifested in Supporting farmers, providing social guarantees for workers and combating unemployment, antimonopoly actions in the production sector, tightening the process of obtaining state loans for banks, leaving only viable, and a number of other measures.
The World Crisis
At the same time, it should be remembered that the Great Depression in the USA soon spread to the rest of the world, turning the end of the twenties and thirties into one of the most difficult periods in the world history of the 20th century. Industrial production has fallen so much that it was actually thrown back to the level of the beginning of the century. And the difficult economic situation in Germany in the early thirties had a direct consequence of the coming to power of the National Socialist Party Adolf Hitler and related results.