Author: Jamie

Source Entry #1

Cohen, Lizabeth.’’The lessons of the Great Depression’’https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/how-rebuild-nation/611704/, 17, May 2020

 

The article ‘’The Lessons Of The Great Depression’’, the author talks about the struggles  people went through during The Great Depression. The article further talks about the failure of President Hoover which contributed to Roosevelt’s election victory. President Hoover was unable to set up effective strategies to cure The Great Depression and because of his failure Roosevelt was elected as president in 1933. President Roosevelt helped the federal government get involved to help cure The Great Depression.  In response to this disaster, the federal government funded reliefs, created more jobs, and infrastructure for Americans to operate. This was the ‘’New Deal’’ President Roosevelt enacted. Lizabeth Cohen emphasized the hardships Americans went through during The Great Depression and how President Roosvelt responded to this event when she said ‘’ American did not merely endure the Great Depression; its response transformed it into a richer and more equitable society’’ In short,  Lizabeth Cohen believes that the American people did not just survive the Great Depression, but the actions that President Roosevelt  took by establishing the ‘’New Deal’’ helped those who went through hardships as well as making the country wealthier and more equitable for Americans. I strongly agree with Lizabeth Cohen’s statement because president Roosevelt did indeed promise Americans a ‘’New Deal’’ which was able to pull America away from an economic and political disaster. 

I did not pay much attention in social studies classes in middle school, but one topic that always comes to mind is The Great Depression. I don’t remember what my teacher taught me about The Great Depression so I feel like this is a great opportunity to research about it and commit to this topic. I have two questions about The Great Depression. Question one, what are the root causes of The Great Depression? Question two, What were the intermediate and long term consequences of The Great Depression? I discovered trading in late July of 2022, ever since then I’ve been obsessed with the NYSE, studied the movements of America’s three most traded indices, the S&P 500, Dow Jones, and the Nasdaq, just overall super interested in the financial side of the world. Learning about the causes of The Great Depression can help us avoid another black swan event like this, understanding the consequences of The Great Depression will teach young people money saving skills, budgeting skills, and lastly risk management because during The Great Depression, people lost their life savings, people lost money because of risky investments, and people lost their jobs. Saving money and not recklessly spending your money will save you when a  tragic event like this occurs again. I expect to find the main causes of The Great Depression, the reason why the stock market crashed, and the consequences civilians faced. From what I researched so far, the stock market crash in 1929 happened because in the 1920s many people were getting interested in investing their money into the stock market, people were pouring their entire life savings into stocks and some even borrowed money from the bank to do so, which lead stocks to hit a price point that has never been reached before and as stock starts to decline, people and banks lost a lot of money, this really just shows people without any risk management and then when the The Great Depression struck, people had no money to keep themselves alive. This is something I can relate to myself because I’ve lost thousands of dollars trying to make money from stocks, mainly because of poor risk management. 

As a child, I was fascinated with mysteries, forensics, and police related stuff, but schools didn’t talk much about these topics. I explored the internet myself and watched some television programs on Youtube like Live PD. Although I didn’t know whether they were real life scenarios or just actors making up scenes, it was still very interesting and entertaining to me. In High school I took a forensic class which was the only class that sparked my interest. It was during the pandemic, so the class was online. I wished it was in person because I could have put my hands on forensic tools that are used to solve crimes. The teacher gave us videos to watch, and we had to solve the crime scene by ourselves so I didn’t really ask any questions. I am still very interested in forensics to this day. I listen to podcasts about murder crimes that help me stay interested in this topic