(economic) depression (1930)

1900S, PRESIDENTS

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The US stockmarket rose in value by 218% between 1922 and 1926. They would come back to Earth over a few short years. The result of the 1929 crash was that the value of equities fell 90% from the peak, with millions losing money and equal numbers losing their livelihoods. Many big-time operators were ruined.

Boom had turned to bust “on a dime” and unemployment reached 8.2% in 1930. In New York, one couple moved in to a cave in Central Park and managed to live there for a year.

One great myth about the 1929 crash is that people were jumping out of windows as a result. These claims have never been substantiated, some authors point out, and the immediate shock was bad enough but what came next in the drawn-out decade to come would actually be worse: a great downturn unlike anything before it in US history.

And it was US President Hoover who fused the words economicand depression and gave us a new English term in the form of (economic) depression (1930). Around this era there are many more myths and misunderstandings — including the myths around the underlying causes and conclusions of the Great Depression of 1929 to 1941.

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