After World War I, the various countries of the world had a great imbalance of financial power. The United States was one country that had a riddiculous amount of money, especially compared to Europe. It was because of this imbalance of power and because of the poor economic system that was in the United States. The Depression, starting in the United States, soon spread to other countries due to the great amount of interdependency that was inherent of global trade.
Did World War I cause the Great Depression? It definately didn't help on the global scale. But what about in the United States? According to the text, the biggest problem in the states was the amount of reckless gambling on the stock market. After the crash in 1929, the amount of interdependency between countries, especially with the United States, caused the global market to shut down. Had World War I not occured, would the United States have had enough power globally to shut down the global economy? Would the United States have even been involved in such reckless spending? Another country could have been at the front of the economic world. Would that country have been the trigger for the Great Depression then? Or would there have been enough even distribution of resources that the failure of one country economically would just lead to its succession by another?
I agree with your thoughts, but I also think with the natural progression of society it was bound to happen eventually. People are greedy and the markets were already unbalanced before WWI (imperialism). I think the war definitely contributed to the Depression, but it probably would've happened anyway.
ReplyDeleteI agree with tess, i think societys take their ups and downs and the Great Depression was bound to come. And i think that even if resources had been evenly distributed some kind of economical failure would have come eventually. Actually i think that if everyone had had such prosparity the Great Depression would have been Greater, the whole nature of it would have been at least 10 times worse!
ReplyDeleteIts hard to play that guessing game... "would the Great Depression have happened if X,Y, &Z hadn't happened" because the truth is we'll never know. But you do pose some very interesting questions that are absolutely worth bringing up in discussion. Great job!
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