Annotated Bibliography Assignment On The Great Depression

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Annotated Bibliography: The Great Depression
The great depression marked a historical economic crisis that has lived to be discussed to date. The crisis started in the 1929 up to the year 1939. Several authors have discussed the impact of this economic crisis taking different approaches in discussing the economic crisis. An economic depression is a long period of time in which there is a state of high rate of unemployment and unavailability of banking and financial services as a result of lack of enough credit facilities. It is also characterized by a drop in the level of production and consumption of goods and services.
The great depression experienced in 1930 has a left a landmark upon which modern economists can gaze and draw important lessons and conclusions. Modern day economists relate to the state of matters tracing back to 1929 so that they can prevent the economies from going back to the same state. Although there is still confusion as to what could have caused the great depression, various data has been analyzed and valid conclusions have been drawn to help in the processes of decision making. Notably this crisis affected several nations across the world and its impact was felt in different magnitude. In this paper I will analyze the causes of the great depression, the impact of the great depression and lessons learnt from the great depression.
Lee E. Ohanian. What-or Who-Started the Great Depression? UCLA and Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Feb 20, 2008.
The author has focused on the different circumstances that led to the great depression. Lee has given an economic analysis of the great depression looking at the various policies and efforts by the governments of that time. In particular Lee has paid attention to the leadership of president Hoover and compared it with the leadership of President Roosevelt. Lee has focused and looked at the great depression on the part of low employment and high wages. In his analysis Lee mentions that Hoovers new deal of countering competition among companies by raising the wages in the 1920 marked the origin of the great depression and that the 1929 effect was a climax of the effects of that deal. Lee also asserts that the labor unions had a role to play in contributing to the great depression.
Kenneth Matziorinis. The Causes of the Great Depression: A Retrospective, 2009.
The great depression was driven by how the various countries financed the war. However, Matrziorinis assumed that the great depression was resulted from the effect of the USA's reduced spending. It soon oversent it to the rest of the globe since the U.S. was the major economic pillar by then. The worldwide European economic hegemony and geo-political supremacy old order was damaged by the war. New smaller states were established – which needed to create new monetary structures, build newer economies, create new treasuries, develop new economic interrelationships and even pay their debts incurred during the war. All these issues costed a lot of money that the countries did not have at that time.
In his retrospective analysis Matziorinis goes far back to the first world war of the 1914 as a contributing factor to the great depression. He also talks about the fallout and reorganization of the European empires after the war and emergence of smaller states. These states needed to reestablish themselves economically, pay their war debts, issue new currencies and new treasuries. Another notable aspect as by Matziorinis was the suspension of the gold standard as countries needed to print money to pay for their war debts. Global financial imbalances and German War repatriations contributed to the great depression as several countries were in debt with each other. The USA emerged a winner from the First World War and several countries relied on it for credit as its economy was stable as compared to other countries.
Thilo Albers, Martin Uebele,. The Global Impact of the Great Depression. Economic History Working Papers, No.218/ 2015. Department of Economic History, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2015.
The Great Depression in the U.S had great impacts worldwide. The stock market crashed, the monetary policies failed similarly to the gold standard. This led to unavailability of fiscal leadership and guidance which ended in global fiscal imbalance. On the other hand, the depression too had a critical role in the establishment of the macroeconomic policies which geared at tempering the economic upturns and downfalls. Several research and ideas came up to solve the problem. The famous being the works of Maynard Keynes – a British economist. His works in the general employment theory of the year 1936 was one of the literature that all other countries based their economic management policies development.
The authors have discussed the economic performance for 30 countries across the world for the period between 1925 and 1936. In their analysis the authors found out that the global economic recovery of 1931 was slower contrary to what several authors suggest....