Is there anyway the US could have avoided the post ww2 recession?

It is VJ day, what can the United States do to keep from falling into the historical recession?

The fact that most of continental Europe and Japan are in ruins and will be dependent upon US exports for a while should allow us to mitigate any perceived 'historical recession'.
 
In the late 40s there was a major slow down of the economy before the 1950s boom in the transition back to a peace time economy.

Let me share with you the GDP of the US in the late 40s (in 1990 USD)

1945: $1,644,761,000,000
1946: $1,305,357,000,000
1947: $1,285,697,000,000
1948: $1,334,331,000,000
1949: $1,339,505,000,000
1950: $1,455,916,000,000

The question being is there anyway the United States could have more efficiently transitioned back to a peace time economy.
 
I believe the causes of the recession were largely related to the rapid demobilization of the US forces, which shrank from 12-ish million to about a tenth of that in record time.

So I suppose a more gradual demobilization would ease the economic problems considerably, though at a cost to the treasury for keeping soldiers under arms, obviously. Not to mention, there needs to be some sort of reason for such a protracted demobilization...

I suppose an extended conventional-attritional war against Japan - no nukes being used for some reason - could keep US forces tied down in the pacific much longer. Or a particularly vicious guerrilla campaign in Germany, forcing the US to keep much larger ground forces in central Europe. Finally, there's always a WW3-ish scenario where the allies clash over the ruins of Germany, but then you're really not talking about gradual demobilization at all.
 
In the late 40s there was a major slow down of the economy before the 1950s boom in the transition back to a peace time economy.

Let me share with you the GDP of the US in the late 40s (in 1990 USD)

1945: $1,644,761,000,000
1946: $1,305,357,000,000
1947: $1,285,697,000,000
1948: $1,334,331,000,000
1949: $1,339,505,000,000
1950: $1,455,916,000,000

The question being is there anyway the United States could have more efficiently transitioned back to a peace time economy.

Probably not, the 1945 figure is an almost totally military goods economy being paid for by high taxes and war bonds. it took a couple of years both to demobilize not just the troops but also the entire economy(This was probably the only time in history outside the civil war where the entire nation was mobilized for war).
 
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