Great Depression Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==== Gold standard ==== [[File:Graph charting income per capita throughout the Great Depression.svg|thumb|upright=1.8|The Depression in international perspective<ref>International data from {{cite web |last=Maddison |first=Angus |author-link=Angus Maddison |title=Historical Statistics for the World Economy: 1β2003 AD |url=https://www.ggdc.net/Maddison/Historical_Statistics/}}{{dead link|date=May 2017|bot=InternetArchiveBot|fix-attempted=yes}}. Gold dates culled from historical sources, principally {{Cite book |last=Eichengreen |first=Barry |url=https://archive.org/details/goldenfettersgol00eich |title=Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919β1939 |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1992 |isbn=0-19-506431-3 |location=New York |author-link=Barry Eichengreen}}</ref>]] Some economic studies have indicated that just as the downturn was spread worldwide by the rigidities of the [[gold standard]], it was suspending gold convertibility (or devaluing the currency in gold terms) that did the most to make recovery possible.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Eichengreen |first=Barry |url=https://archive.org/details/goldenfettersgol00eich |title=Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919β1939 |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1992 |isbn=0-19-506431-3 |location=New York |author-link=Barry Eichengreen}}</ref> Every major currency left the gold standard during the Great Depression. The UK was the first to do so. Facing [[speculative attack]]s on the [[Pound sterling|pound]] and depleting [[Official gold reserves|gold reserves]], in September 1931 the [[Bank of England]] ceased exchanging pound notes for gold and the pound was floated on foreign exchange markets. Japan and the Scandinavian countries joined the United Kingdom in leaving the gold standard in 1931. Other countries, such as Italy and the United States, remained on the gold standard into 1932 or 1933, while a few countries in the so-called "gold bloc", led by France and including Poland, Belgium and Switzerland, stayed on the standard until 1935β36. According to later analysis, the earliness with which a country left the gold standard reliably predicted its economic recovery. For example, The UK and Scandinavia, which left the gold standard in 1931, recovered much earlier than France and Belgium, which remained on gold much longer. Countries such as China, which had a [[silver standard]], almost avoided the depression entirely. The connection between leaving the gold standard as a strong predictor of that country's severity of its depression and the length of time of its recovery has been shown to be consistent for dozens of countries, including [[Developing country|developing countries]]. This partly explains why the experience and length of the depression differed between regions and states around the world.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bernanke |first=Ben |date=March 2, 2004 |title=Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke: Money, Gold and the Great Depression |url=https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2004/200403022/default.htm |url-status=live |journal=At the H. Parker Willis Lecture in Economic Policy, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220215053205/https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2004/200403022/default.htm |archive-date=February 15, 2022 |access-date=February 18, 2022}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page