What would America look like without a stock market crash in 1929?

Unrecognizable. And I say that based on unravelling the threads that give us the Depression-era, a perfect storm of events true enough, but the market crash is but a symptom rather than a cause, although its impact upon confidence and finance is great enough to unravel a lot of American history too. I am reading Lords of Finance to get an idea of what made the Depression, seeking in those pages an idea of what is different in any ATL where paths diverge. ...

After you read all that, search out the literature on capitol investment cycles, the relation ship to that and the transition from 'mature' industries to new growing industries in certain economic sectors. ie: The transition from coal to petroleum, or from railway to automobile as the growth industry in that sector. It appears to me the 1920s/30s represented a perfect storm of economic sectors that were in the most volatile stage of transition. This wide spread volatility across the globe created large scale change in investment and labor, to the point of chaos. Aggravating factors were the after effects of the Great War, the conversion of the growing economy of the Russian empire into a economic nonentity of the USSR, the similar collapse of China into a ongoing civil war and even worse economic chaos.
 
After you read all that, search out the literature on capitol investment cycles, the relation ship to that and the transition from 'mature' industries to new growing industries in certain economic sectors. ie: The transition from coal to petroleum, or from railway to automobile as the growth industry in that sector. It appears to me the 1920s/30s represented a perfect storm of economic sectors that were in the most volatile stage of transition. This wide spread volatility across the globe created large scale change in investment and labor, to the point of chaos. Aggravating factors were the after effects of the Great War, the conversion of the growing economy of the Russian empire into a economic nonentity of the USSR, the similar collapse of China into a ongoing civil war and even worse economic chaos.

I have read enough to conclude that the Depression era was not so easily unwound, as you point out it was a transition and even if the impact is reduced or effects ameliorated, the 1930s were going to be a rough ride. I roughly guess it can be more patchy and more localized, OTL shows that each economy had its own experience within the global malaise, so in my various drafting of an ATL I tend to hold the era to some similar doldrums, trying to predict who chooses a proactive policy, move away from gold, manage inflation and deflation better, and so forth to emerge stronger or as weak by the end of the 1940s assuming no war, as I think the depression era needs about 20 years to get into a genuine recovery minus the ultimate demand engine.
 
... as I think the depression era needs about 20 years to get into a genuine recovery minus the ultimate demand engine.

Worst case for the US is no WWII & it remains a low growth stagnate economy for much of the 20th Century. The relative prosperity does not reach 1900 or 1910 levels again until the 1960s or 1990s.
 
Worst case for the US is no WWII & it remains a low growth stagnate economy for much of the 20th Century. The relative prosperity does not reach 1900 or 1910 levels again until the 1960s or 1990s.

A definite possibility. So far as I have pondered a no WW2 scenario, putting the global trade system back into operation and gaining the wealth it could create is not a certainty. Worst case might be a "softer" depression, without the apparent collapse of capitalism the forces to alter American politics into some form of intervention may never gain traction sufficient to break the US economy out of its lackluster stagnation. One path I am pondering is with a surviving Imperial Germany post stalemated Great War the world fractures into a more disconnected Anglo-French zone, German sphere, USSR blackhole and rest of the world/USA thing, each capable of "going it alone" and barely reliant upon the global trade we think of as normal. It sort of cements the tarrif barrier paradigm into normalcy and might well impoverish the world.
 
Judging by the trends the 1930s what have resembled the 1960s in the Civil Rights and women's rights movements.
The 1920s were rather progressive in that respect.
 
How would the US government have responded to the Great Depression if Hoover wasn't in power? Hoover would have a better reputation as a Great Humanitarian (he organized post-WW1 relief efforts for Belgium), but I'm not sure if another president would be just as beholden to the economic orthodoxy of the time.

Hoover considered vetoing the Smoot-Hawley tariff act, but decided not to due to opposition from within his party.
 
as of early 1930 it seemed that the stock market decline had run its course and that America was just undergoing a garden-variety recession...
So why didn't the market bottom until 1932? And not recover to its pre-Crash level until, what, 1954?

And without the Depression, IMO Prohibition is going to last a lot longer.
 
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hammo1j

Donor
The future looks so rosy that people run up debt for the now thinking it will be easily be repaid.

The debt is not put into wise investment but spent on status, housing and entertainment.

This results in a 'bubble' that eventually bursts, like the hangover after the jag.

The bubble can only be fixed by not allowing it to occur in the first place. Banks have a big part to play in this.

1. Raising interest rates.
2. Cutting back on personal loans.
3. Due dilligence on commercial lending.
4. Higher deposits for housing.

I think if you had continuous slow growth we might have skipped WW2 and not have such a militaristic culture.

The boom and bust approach produces much more exciting history though!
 
To prevent unsustainable growth the government would have had to step in and slow down spending, this obviously would lead to a major slowdown in the economy, possibly considered a recession, but not a full blown depression. This would be an incredibly difficult idea to push through as purposely slowing down spending would seem like a direct cause of the nerfed depression, this would kill the political career of any politician that pushed this through. Finally the biggest challenge is that there wasn’t much consensus that people were spending to much and any slowdown of spending would lead to economic downturn.
 
If you take a look at the civil rights movement in the late 1920s looked a lot like the 1950s. The Great depression and World War II set back Civil Rights movement decades.
Without the Great depression the Civil Rights movement would have taken off in the early 1930s at a time when the Klu Klux Klan was having serious internal problems and facing public backlash for the criminal activities of some of its higher ranking members.
 
Without the Depression, IMO (as noted upthread), Prohibition is likely to continue longer (since ending it was a way to respond to the Crash). That likely means a lot more violent crime in a lot more places. It also means gangsters more firmly entrenched in more places. Enough to buy a Governor or two? (The board's fave, Huey Long, had already been bribed to allow illegal slots.) It looks like California's Attorney General was influenced, if not bought--& LAPD was pretty well Mob-owned. NYPD, too, I'd guess. How long before that clears up?

And how likely is it longer Prohibition encourages a spread to other things, like MJ & heroin or opium? Especially with the widespread racism at the time. Does Harry Anslinger get his way?:eek:

With the more-widespread crime, it's fairly obvious things like the Thompson SMG are going to be made illegal, & maybe before OTL (1934); the gun control laws may end up a lot tougher, too.

OTOH, it may mean gangster pictures don't happen, as Paramount (?) doesn't make them a staple. (That has some important butterflies on Mickey Rooney's & Ed. G. Robinson's careers, for a start.) It may also mean the 1948 case to end block booking & blind bidding happens a lot sooner; that will shut hundreds of theatres & more than a few movie studios (all of Poverty Row is likely to go under:eek:). If the bottom-feeders go under, a lot of movie serials & B-movies likely don't get made.:eek::eek: And that affects a very large number of actors, directors, & writers--not least John Wayne,:eek: Val Lewton (producer of 1942's "Cat People", for one), & a bunch of others I can't name offhand.
 
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