Rethinking the Great Depression (American Ways Series) - Hardcover

Smiley, Gene

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1566634725 ISBN 13: 9781566634724

Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 2002

Synopsis

The worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s was the most traumatic event of the twentieth century. It ushered in substantial expansions in the role of governments around the world, focused attention on social insurance, and for a time bolstered socialist economic ideas as a form of cure. Skepticism about the effectiveness of government withered as the free market failed, and it seems safe to say that Keynesian economics would not have flourished if the depression had not occurred. While this severe contraction has been extensively examined, we are just now—thanks to increasingly sophisticated analytical techniques—beginning to comprehend its causes and the reasons for the extremely slow recovery that occurred in the United States. Much of this analysis, though, remains in specialized studies that are visited mainly by economists and economic historians. In Rethinking the Great Depression, Gene Smiley draws upon this recent scholarship to present a clear and nontechnical analysis for the general reader. He explains the roots of the depression in the 1920s, the efforts of the New Deal to combat the economic crisis, and the legacy of these efforts in World War II and the postwar years. He offers new insights and some surprising conclusions: that the causes of the Great Depression lay in the dislocations caused by World War I and the attempt to reconstitute an international gold standard in the 1920s; that the New Deal, regardless of its good intentions, adopted misguided fiscal and monetary policies that prolonged the depression in the United States beyond what it should have been; that World War II, rather than stimulating an end to the depression, actually postponed a full recovery until 1946.

About this title

About the Author

Gene Smiley is professor of economics at Marquette University and a specialist in economic theory and American economic history. He has also written The American Economy in the Twentieth Century. He lives in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Reviews

Smiley, an academic, revisits the Great Depression, the period from 1929 until 1933 that had such a slow recovery that the whole decade of the 1930s is often considered the Depression. Armed with increasingly sophisticated analytical techniques, the author sets out to survey the 1930s so that readers without training in economics have a better understanding of the forces at work during this period. In his view, the Great Depression prompted growing intellectual fascination with socialist economic ideas and precipitated World War II, which in turn led to the spread of communism worldwide. This era gave rise to Keynesian macroeconomics, which explained the Depression and advised how to get out of it and is now mainstream economic analysis. Smiley contends that "in many ways the Great Depression was the defining moment for 20th Century America." Mary Whaley
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Edition details

• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1566634725
• ISBN 13: 9781566634724
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 192