AHC/Question: The Great Depression

I'm currently working on a personal project of mine (which may/may not be put up around here), and I was wondering - how can we make the Great Depression, especially in the United States, even worse than OTL in such a way as to create a minimal ripple effect, especially in Europe? Ideally, I'd like to make the US dollar worth significantly less than it was OTL in this period.

The only stipulations are that WWI and its aftermath must occur as is, and that Europe either continue into the thirties more or less as OTL, or in even better shape as it (somehow) takes advantage of America's economic mess, with a Germany and Britain that have significantly larger industrial bases by '37-'39.

Bonus points if this create an ultra-isolationist United States as the Second World War erupts whose congress sticks its head in the sand with the fall of Poland.
 
That's actually rather difficult because of the interplay of the US and European economies in the descent into the Great Depression. The Great Depression didn't just happen like flipping a switch after the 1929 market crash. The world economies went down in stages. At first the US suffered what we would call a worse than normal recession. Then the US stupidly passed Smoot-Hawley (tariffs). The world's biggest exporter starts a trade war. Really stupid. The trade war hit the US hard, but it also hit European economies, especially the weak new countries of eastern and central Europe. The stronger countries of Europe tried to save the weaker ones with loans, which weren't enough. When the weaker countries fell anyway it took the stronger ones with them. The panic from failing banks in Europe spread back to the US, causing runs on banks, which forced banks to pull in loans from perfectly sound businesses so they could pay off their depositors. And at that point you had a Great Depression.

Herbert Hoover was a great engineer, a very bright man and an energetic leader. He was a horrible communicator though, and many of his policies were counter-productive. He let the process of Smoot-Hawley get away from him and mutate into a declaration of trade war. He pushed businesses not to cut wages, which sounded great because in the short run it maintained consumer purchasing power, but in the long run it forced more bankruptcies and layoffs.

With that background: Your best bet might be to have Roosevelt die early in his first term--within a few days of inauguration. FDR was not the economic wizard that a lot of people see him as, but he was a savvy politician and a great communicator. Vice President Garner would have been much less effective.
 

NothingNow

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I'm currently working on a personal project of mine (which may/may not be put up around here), and I was wondering - how can we make the Great Depression, especially in the United States, even worse than OTL in such a way as to create a minimal ripple effect, especially in Europe?

It's impossible without employing ASB fiat at every turn. Minimal ripple effects mean OTL's depression in Europe, unless everyone is full on scandinavian, simply by the nature of the global market.

DaleCoz has a good idea of how it happened. Kill FDR, and the new deal though, and you've got a good way to do it. Fun thing is it'll make the Larger Latin American nations a hell of a lot more powerful, both through ISI, and the lack of the US being any sort of threat at all if it can't afford to feed it's factory workers.
 
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