why the Great Depression happened, what effect it had and why governments of the time failed to prevent the crisis.Are we headed for another Great Depression?
The foundations of the Great Depression Black Tuesday – October 29, 1929 – is one of the most infamous days in world history. The New York stockmarket collapsed in spectacular and unparalleled fashion. Folklore has it that desperate bankers threw themselves oou of buildings at the shock and sheer desperation of it all. The seeds of the instability were sown years earlier, in the economic chaos resulting from World War I. The war had decimated the major European economies and the US profited, both from its initial abstention from the conflict and by loaning money to the weakened European powers. As the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky put it after the war’s end: “Before the war, America was Europe’s debtor. The latter served as the principal factory and the principal depot for world commodities. Moreover Europe, above all England, was the central banker. All these leading roles now belong to the United States. Europe has been relegated to the background. The United States is the princ
