The Great Depression wreaked havoc on the United States and the world during the late 1920’s until the 1930’s, due to the over-inflation of the stock market.

The Great Depression is an event to remember since there is always the possibility of it happening again as the economy is ever changing based upon the consumers and it is especially important to the next generation that they know the warning signs of another depression.

Historically, the Depression caused a high number of people to become unemployed due to the vicious downward spiral that occurred after the collapse of the stock market. 

Brian Vandiver, CHS teacher, said it started when a “lot of people were buying on the margin and investing in risky type things” when it came to the stock market collapse.

In fact, the causes of the Great Depression can go all the way back to the end of World War 1. 

Ken Joling, CHS teacher, said “The Treaty of Versailles and the international conditions created by that, created a weakness in the economy throughout the 1920’s.” 

All the economy needed at the time was some bad luck and the destructive cycle would start.

The Roaring 20’s “was created not by sound financial policy, but by massive borrowing and eventually the borrowing had to be paid for and when we ended up paying on our debt rather than paying for new products, that led to an oversupply of goods,” said Joling, “Because there was too little demand.” 

This led to companies laying off workers “who now don’t have money, who now don’t buy goods, so we have too many goods and it just kept spiraling downwards,” said Joling.

When asked about the possibility of another depression, Joling said “The only way I think that we could end up in another depression is if we either remove a lot of the guardrails we put in place to ensure we don’t have a depression. The other thing that would worry me is that we’re running up massive deficits right now during a time of economic growth, normally your deficits should go down during times of growth because you could have a little more leeway when the bad times come.”

If the United States were to go into another Great Depression, the likeliness of the entire world being affected is high. Vandiver said “The depression went worldwide” and “it had effects throughout the world.” The only reason we got out of the Great Depression so quickly was because of the economic boom World War 2 had brought.

When asked about World War 2 and the Great Depression, Vandiver said “I think most people agree with that, there were already signs that we were getting out of the depression before, but it definitely accelerated it.”