Many economists blame the stock market crash on Herbert Hoover, the only president from the state of Iowa. Life was good in the early 1920's, people were using credit, no worries, the war was over. The first cause according to some, was that the stocks were placed to high and according to some people stock's values rose 120%. Secondly, for some reason economists blame agriculture for its prices in stocks were to low and that caused the unstable market. Which personally I don't understand it at all. Still before the market crashed, on Black Thursday 12 million shares were recorded when normally there were only about 4 million. During these "black" days people were borrowing money to buy different kinds of stocks and actually, it hurt them more then what they knew. By "Black Monday" though, more and more marketers were backing out of the stocks because they were afraid of losing anymore money. When all of these causes came to show on October 29th, 1929, was when America knew that they were in for a major hurt for the upcoming years, but America would prove that they could stand the test of time.
Some may argue that the stock market crash of 1929 caused the great depression, but in my opinion and according to this source there were four major reasons for the depression that shook America for nearly a decade. First off, the stock market crash did play a major roll because people had no where to invest there money because stockholders had lost a combined total of 40 billion dollars! Wall Street just couldn't get itself back together. Secondly, banks failed, 9,000 of them failed. People could deposit there money into the bank and not be sure if it would be guaranteed to have it there in a month. Very large banks that made it through the depression weren't quite sure of the economy so they became strict on the loans that they gave out and this hurt people because they didn't have any money to spend for themselves, or their families. Third, individuals from every standard of living quit buying products therefore businesses didn't make money and they had lay off people. Unemployment shot up to 25% at one point during the depressions. Without money people couldn't spend any, and ended up getting laid off. Fourth, drought conditions in the Midwest, or the dust-bowl, disabled farmers to grow crops which hurt the agricultural stocks and people couldn't invest in agriculture stocks either which today makes up a large part of our economy.
Herbert Hoover, a man who will go down as one of our worst presidents, who took office in time of a dire crisis, tried to help our country as much as he could but couldn't do anything to help his fellow Americans, and that lost him the election to FDR and his New Deal. Hoover kept telling everyone things will get better, things will get better, but he was wrong. Hoover though denied many requests to do something with the American dollar, and he believed that the businesses should do as they please "Laisezze Faire." He was in favor of progressiveness, and though he wasn't a good president, maybe this is just because we are both from Iowa, he did what he could, he did what he believed in, and the American people elected him but they still didn't stand by him which is still hurting our country today by not standing by our leaders even though they might be doing somethings we don't like, but we elected them.
Causes for the Great Depression Source
Causes for the Stock Market Crash Source Herbert Hoover Source 1 Herbert Hoover Source 2
Couldn't put pictures in because it said it was over 100,000 characters so I linked them instead.
Comments
Well done Logan!