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U.S. History 1877-Present 8.1: The Great Depression 116 Views
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Description:
Hope you didn't have too much money invested in stocks when the Great Depression came along. There's a reason it wasn't called the Great Windfall or the Awesome Happy Years.
Transcript
- 00:00
in 1929 the stock market crashed amidst the worst economic [The Times front page about the stock market crash]
- 00:09
collapse in American history it was even worse than that time the NYSE tripped and
- 00:13
did a faceplant in the middle of Wall Street somehow so embarrassing [NYSE as a person falling over]
- 00:16
many say that the crash of 29 was an epic let's say fair fail even guys like
- 00:22
Calvin Coolidge whose lays a fair presidency had fueled the Roaring [Calvin Coolidge sat at his desk]
Full Transcript
- 00:25
Twenties off state and a total free-market ability to pick this out the [Capitalism cracking and plasters being put on it]
- 00:30
same guy we said the business of America is business was nothing stuff like well
- 00:36
it has always been possible to see some things which were solid and upon which
- 00:40
you could say smoke but as I look about I now see nothing to give ground folks
- 00:45
nothing young man whoa if that dude was the bread and he wasn't the only one in [The US looking sad]
- 00:50
fact this next period of American history is usually called a Great
- 00:53
Depression not actually because everybody needed Prozac or they probably [Stop sign appears over a prozac pill]
- 00:57
did but because the economy was depressed as in pressed down plain latin [A hand pressing down the word economy]
- 01:02
if that's confusing for over a decade after the crash jobs were scarce pocket
- 01:06
money was scarcer and thousands of Americans saying into complete and total
- 01:10
poverty the nation's farms were dying it was so bad that we can't even try and [Dry field with no crops]
- 01:14
make that funny but what caused the depression and how did America respond
- 01:18
when it happened like okay the market crash and aren't any job and banks are
- 01:23
closing like it's their new hobby but surely this isn't the start of global [List of things causing the great depression]
- 01:28
decade-long economic failure right that's what President Herbert Hoover
- 01:32
thought he was unlucky enough to be just eight months into his presidency when
- 01:36
everything went bust and his first impulse was to look on the sunny side [Hoover signing a document]
- 01:40
Hoover figured we could just wait it out with minimal government intervention but
- 01:45
what actually happened was that everything continued to get worse we [Firefigters tackling a blaze]
- 01:49
here gave a speech it just went like oops make matters a billion times worse
- 01:54
a horrible drought struck America's heartland a plant died and their root
- 01:57
systems along with them died topsoil dried off and was blown away by the wind [The topsoil flies off in the wind]
- 02:02
this caused giant dust storms called black blizzards which devastated
- 02:06
farmlands and caused a new type of sickness called dust pneumonia this dust [Child stood in a dust cloud]
- 02:11
mageddon was called the dustbowl smell along with
- 02:15
following prices of crops and transformed the swarms of farming [Farming family in the dried out farmland]
- 02:18
families into homeless Wanderers scouring America for jobs in a new place
- 02:22
to be the lucky made it to California with banjos on their knees amidst all [Guy playing a banjo]
- 02:28
this chaos came a new president named Franklin Delano Roosevelt while FDR had
- 02:32
a radical idea for how to fix America he called it the New Deal yeah it sounds [FDR smiling]
- 02:38
like a used car sales it was actually sweeping legislation that gave the
- 02:41
entire government a sort of socialist overhaul let's see there were massive [Picture of people going to work]
- 02:46
make-work programs there were huge subsidies and price controls for farmers
- 02:50
there was government regulation of stock trading at America's first public [SEC logo]
- 02:54
pension programs Social Security well some people say that FDR's New Deal
- 02:58
helped to halt the depression lessening its impact until World War two gave the [Hand stops the US GDP chart from falling anymore]
- 03:02
US economy the jolt it needed to fire upping it others say that the New Deal
- 03:06
was a sneaky left-wing takeover of the government that didn't do much good and
- 03:10
saddled America with social programs that are holding us back even until [Guy protesting about welfare in front of the Capitol]
- 03:15
today well the one thing everybody can agree on is that the Great Depression
- 03:18
made a permanent dent in America it's the reason why so many things today are [A car labelled the depression drives into the US and causes a dent]
- 03:23
like they are it's also the reason why every American over 90 keeps their money
- 03:27
in their mattress [Old man lifts up his mattress to show loads of cash under it]
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