What Were the Domestic and Foreign Causes of the Great Depression?
Economic inequality. Economic inequality is necessary to keep an economy in motion, and to keep an economy competitive because it creates motivation. However, if the country is unable to fix the economy during the recession, it will hit a recession (Temin, 2016). America had too much wealth and income inequality. The middle class was collapsing, and the prominent people were becoming more affluent, the underprivileged and the intermediate level were developing poorer. And since the middle class is what keeps an economy together, the economy just collapsed.
Globalization. A global economy, globalization, became quite problematic during the Great Depression. America hit a boom, unable to stop the depression, and because of the worldwide economy, the rest of the world followed (Temin, 2016). Instead of just one country going into a depression, society as a whole went into a depression, making it incredibly difficult to get out.
Weak leadership. Now, while recessions are close to inevitable, getting a country out of the recession relatively easy. The problem, though, was weak leadership. The leaders could not regulate the market as they should have; they were not prioritized correctly. They made promises during the election and just were not able to follow them up. But this is where Roosevelt came in.
How Did President Hoover Respond To the Economic Emergency?
He tried to get companies to volunteer to go to 40 hour weeks. He tried a couple of other things, all of which failed. The treasury did the opposite of what they should have done against those raised interest rates and made borrowing money harder. Mostly he did nothing, and his advisers said it would correct its self. He never realized how far his country fell until he campaigned. Even them, he did nothing. The night before Roosevelt was sworn in, he called Roosevelt and asked him if he would sign a letter with him to close the banks. The crisis was already going on for months. Roosevelt told him to sign if he wanted too, but he is doing first thing tomorrow.
Reference
Temin, P. (2016). Great Depression. Banking Crises, 144–153. Doi: 10.1057/9781137553799_16