How long did the recession last?

In 65438+February this year, this round of economic recession ushered in the 1 anniversary. This makes it the longest recession in the United States since 1982. If it lasts for another five months, it will be the longest recession experienced by the United States since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

The average duration of several recessions experienced by American economy after World War II was 10 month. "It is obvious that this recession cannot end in a few months." Jeffrey frankl, a member of NBER Business Cycle Measurement Committee and a professor at Harvard University, said, "We will be very lucky if it can calm down in the middle of next year." /roll/2008 1203/ 1405255 10 15 . shtml

The Great Depression that swept the world in 1930s was an unprecedented economic event. Before this, there has never been such a large-scale and long-term economic depression, and there has never been one since. It represents a rare failure of the industrial economy.

The economic activity in the United States continued to decline from the middle of 1929 to the first few months of 1933. The four-year recession was not smooth, but the decline in economic output was unprecedented and confusing. Industrial output fell by 37%, prices fell by 33%, real GNP fell by 30%, and nominal GNP fell by more than half. In 1930s, the unemployment rate peaked at 25%, and remained above 15% in other years. Many economic resources in the United States have been idle for 10 years. It was not until the arrival of World War II that employment increased and attracted a large number of laborers.

This major event is either a manifestation of major instability within the economy or a reaction after the economy has been hit by a major impact. Traditional scholars tend to emphasize the former, while recent research focuses on the latter. An older view holds that the Great Depression in the United States was an isolated event. In recent years, scholars have insisted on looking at the Great Depression from an international perspective. They believe that the Great Depression in the United States should be viewed from the background of both sides of the Atlantic, even if it is not from an international perspective.

The external shock that disturbed the development of the world economy was the First World War. More broadly, this external shock is what Churchill called the "Second Thirty Years' War". This influence not only affects the world economy, but also affects the background of policy making. Although the United States rose as an outstanding industrial economy after World War I, it is still a part of the world economy. This is obvious, especially on the theoretical basis of economic policy decision-making in the United States and Europe.

This war and its subsequent changes have had many effects on the American economy. Among them, the three most important influences are: changes in the pattern of international creditor's rights and debts; The expansion and collapse of agriculture; The end of the wave of mass immigration to the United States.

Before World War I, Britain was a major capital exporter. As a long-term recipient of British capital, the United States has only recently begun to reduce its international debt. But Britain used most of its overseas assets to support the war and sold its debts to the United States, so the United States became the largest creditor country in the world. 19 14 years, the net foreign debt of the United States was at least $3.5 billion. Three years later, the United States became a creditor with a net debt of more than $7 billion. Although there are some elements of double counting, it is obvious that the balance of payments situation in the United States has undergone tremendous changes.

After the war, after more than five years of economic turmoil, the gold standard was rebuilt. Although it is not exactly the same as before the war, the revived gold standard still takes deflation rather than currency depreciation as a measure to make up for the foreign exchange deficit, and the gold standard makes the deficit countries bear more deflationary pressure than the inflation pressure faced by the foreign exchange surplus countries. The changed international debt pattern does not match the old exchange rate system. Therefore, rebuilding the gold standard with the pre-war exchange rate means that there will be imbalances to a large extent. Britain and Germany found themselves in financial crisis in the early 1930s, and they didn't have enough policy tools to deal with these crises.

American agriculture flourished during the war, and its products were exported to Europe, which was in urgent need of food and clothes. Other countries not involved in war conflicts have also expanded their agricultural production capacity, which has further increased the supply of world agricultural products. When peace came, the military demand for these agricultural products declined, and at the same time, European agricultural products were re-supplied to the market. As a result, the price of agricultural products fell and the agricultural disaster continued in the 1920s. With the post-war deflation, the decline in demand for agricultural products became more serious, which made farmers heavily in debt.

The burden on American farmers has increased with the excessive reclamation of land in remote areas, which are not suitable for farming in the long run. The result is soil erosion and low output. The debt problem of farmers is very acute, because the demand for American agricultural products has remained at a high level for several years in a row, and many farmers borrow a lot to make use of the high prices of agricultural products to obtain income. However, the reduction of agricultural products prices has brought great difficulties to farmers, who not only expanded the planting area, but also borrowed a lot.

Not all farmers are in trouble. Technological changes, especially in the field of grain production, made rapid progress in the 1920s. Tractors using gasoline began to change the demand for labor. Large-scale agricultural production began to change the face of the plain. Although the price of wheat is not high, many wheat farmers benefit from economies of scale. But cotton farmers, especially those who rent small farms, are in abject poverty. Low cotton prices and new technologies have replaced these farmers. Black farmers from the south found themselves in this situation and moved to northern cities to look for job opportunities.

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