I'm taking a course Intro to Literature, and I'm supposed to give a speech on the causes of the Great Depression on April 8th, relating to one of Steinbeck's novels. I'll of course do my own research, but I thought that it'd be interesting to see what you guy's think.

I think there are many reasons, but the actions of the Federal Reserve and their mishandling of the money supply are the biggest factors. I tend to believe the theories of Milton Friedman. This link has a good article on it:

The Great Depression According to Milton Friedman | The Foundation for Economic Education: The Freeman, Ideas on Liberty

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Great article caltex, thanks a lot for that. I have some quesitons on that thought, maybe you can answer em for me?

In what way is the Canadian banking system freer than the US system, and what kind of systemic weaknesses does the US system have that calls for a lender of last resort?

Also, the article measures that Austria economists argue the stock crash can be attributed to something else than rampant speculation - do you happen to have anything on that?

Oh, and a noob question here Who is responsible for printing money if there is no central bank?

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normally the government is responsible for printing and regulating money, in the US its done by a private cartel

as far as the great depression goes, one of the leading factors was that there few and very loose regulations on buying stocks using leverage, and the same situation is here in the US yet again, too much leverage allowed, when the market declines it turns into an avalanche

While certainly the banks allowing borrowing on the margin with very little "down" was a contributing factor was it not the greed of the investors to actually take out the loans without enough money to cover the margin when the stocks lost value the real problem? Had they borrowed money to buy stocks with only 50% of the value borrowed instead of the 90% that was allowed there would have been no panic selling.

Of course the market crash of '29 only initiated the Great Depression and then it was exacerbated by government actions and the dust bowl extended it until WW II. Sort of like we are seeing now with the mortgage problems. We would probably be better off it the federal government simply let the mortgage companies take their losses.

America's Great Depression had several causes. Obviously, it had a lot to do with the stock market crash of 1929, but other factors probably contributed to the depression as well. Reduction of international trade due to the imposition of tariffs played a part, and as others have mentioned, the Dust Bowl and the Federal Reserve helped cause or worsened the depression. Fortunately, some of the policies of the New Deal and our transition to a war-time economy lifted us out of the depression for the most part.

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The New Deal and other pre-WWII government actions only extended and made the depression worse.

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Is that why we experienced significant increases in GDP, Index of Industrial Production, money supply, and exports over its years of operation?

Give me a break, dude...

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The economy did eventually recover. It was not due to the New Deal. All capitalist economies eventually recover.

The tripling of tax rates, growing the inefficient government, over regulating the economy, and the relentless anti business propaganda all lead to slowing economic recovery.

Unemployment in 1939 after 6 years of the new deal, unemployment rates were at 17.2%, barely better than at the peak of the depression. The Real GDP per capita had a very small return to closing in on previous values.

Capitalism and its power to create wealth ended the depression, not a huge increase in the size of government, taxing people to death and telling them business's are evil/

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Do you actually have statistics that back this up, or are you merely spouting off b/s because you oppose any sort of government presence in the economy and are unwilling to admit how beneficial Roosevelt's policies were? You've claimed that the New Deal made the depression worse, but so far have only shown that it didn't (initially) drastically reduce unemployment levels.

You're going by Lebergott's estimates. According to those same estimates, unemployment was at 24.9% in 1933. A ~30% decrease in unemployment is not insignificant...

Stats?

I don't know about per capita GDP, but the GDP was 101,444 in 1929, 68,337 and 112,961 in 1940 (in millions of 1929 dollars.)

In the years of the New Deal's operation, it almost doubled. I suppose this is a coincidence?

You can refuse to believe that Government regulation can foster economic growth all you want, but you'll have to continue ignoring the facts that stare you in the face to do so.

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