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The government helped create both the 1929 crash and the Great Depression. The US suspended the gold standard to pay for the first World War. Commercial banks w
by zoshi 5y ago
The government helped create both the 1929 crash and the Great Depression. The US suspended the gold standard to pay for the first World War. Commercial banks were flooded with money, and when inflation got out of hand the Fed tightened rates in 1928-29. Then after the crash, the government implemented all kinds of disastrous economic policies, including wage and price controls, and a massive trade war with Smoot-Hawley tariff act, destroying imports and exports. The Fed shrank the monetary base by 7% 1929-1930, one of the largest tightenings in 20th century. The Fed helped create the crash then applied disastrous monetary policy after the crash, none of which was a result of a gold standard.