... made the Depression great? Was it Hoover and his mismanagement? How much of the depression was caused by the crash? Could it have been the build up of the Boom years that caused this? Other proposed theories include the collapse of the gold standard, collapse of international trade, Federal Reserve policy and many other influences. The "Great Depression" is so named because it is by far the largest sustained decline in industrial production and productivity from the century and a half where economic records have been kept with any regularity, and it reached virtually the entire industrialized world and their trading partners in peripheral nations. It led to massive bank failures, high unemployment, as well as dramatic drops in GDP, industrial production, share prices and virtually every other measure of economic growth. The first interpretation of the depression is that it was caused by the Wall Street Crash, where prices on ...

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