alternatehistory.com

While cleaning out my bookshelf, I stumbled upon an old textbook from a college economics course. There was a chapter devoted to the stock market crash of October 1929, at that time the biggest in history. When President Hoover learned that many depositors could not withdraw their money from the banks, he ordered a bank holiday and promised to support the market. He also asked Congress to pass an emergency bill to bail out the five largest banks in the country. His actions prevented what would have been a great economic depression.

But what if Hoover did not do anything? What would the United States be like if such a depression hit? Would we have experienced hyper inflation like in Weimar era Germany, millions of people becoming homeless and living in makeshift shacks and near 30 percent unemployment like in the UK? And if Hoover was defeated for reelection in 1932, what steps would his successor have taken and would he have turned the USA into a dictatorship?

It is scary to think what would have happened. Such a depression would have been dystopic.
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