Lições da Grande Depressão

 Causas da Grande Depressão
Hoover and Roosevelt
− The 1920s was a period of healthy economic growth until President Herbert Hoover instituted anti-market, anti-globalization, anti-immigration, and pro-cartelization policies, Edward Prescott said. The expansion thus ended and a great depression began. Later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's policies prolonged the depression for over six more years, Dr. Prescott said.
In addition, Dr. Prescott said the U.S. economy only began recovering in 1939 when FDR proclaimed the New Deal to be dead.

1929 Stock Market Crash
 
 − Contrary to popular belief, the stock market crash of 1929 wasn’t a major cause of the Great Depression, said Richard Sylla. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell from roughly 300 to 200 between October and November of 1929. However, by April 1930 the Dow had recovered nearly all of those losses and the crash was receding from people’s memories, Dr. Sylla said.
 Labor Costs & Unrest
 
 Richard Vedder said that government policies caused the price of resources, including labor, to deviate significantly from their natural rates in the 1930s. This was the major culprit for the severity and longevity of the period’s economic decline, Dr. Vedder said.
Dr. Vedder believes the economy turned downward in 1929 as part of the routine business cycle. President Hoover pressured U.S. businesses to keep wages stable as sales declined, rather than let them fall. This devastated corporate profits and balance sheets, which hampered businesses’ ability to make loan payments and ultimately led to the banking crisis, Dr. Vedder said.
Effects of Government Job Programs
− Price Fishback suggested that government attempts to create jobs yielded mixed results. When unemployment was higher in the first part of the 1930s, public works expenditures created one additional private-sector job for every eight public jobs created, Dr. Fishback said. As unemployment fell, however, in the second part of the 1930s, an increase in government jobs resulted in a loss of as much as 0.3 or 0.5 jobs as the public sector crowded out the private.
 Fiscal vs. Monetary Stimulus
− Commenting on whether bigger fiscal stimulus will yield larger effects, Ellen McGrattan said the current administration’s advisors estimate that $1 of government spending will generate $1.50 in output. However, Federal Reserve models designed to measure private responses to government spending suggests that stimulus packages yield much smaller effects of closer to $0 in output, McGrattan said.

− Anna Schwartz said fiscal stimulus was tried and failed in the Great Depression, and during Japan’s recession of the 1990s. Instead of fiscal stimulus, Dr. Schwartz believes monetary stimulus is what ends recessions.

Role of Fiscal Stimulus
− Would a fiscal stimulus help the U.S. economy recover today, or add another weapon to fight the problem? Dr. Lucas doesn’t believe so. If the government builds a bridge and the Fed prints money to pay the bridge builders, that is also monetary policy at work; the bridge is irrelevant, Dr. Lucas said.

− In addition, if the government pays for a bridge by taking tax money away from somebody else the effect is a wash, Dr. Lucas said.


− John Cochrane said today’s policy response has so far been chaotic, from the government taking over large sectors unrelated to the financial markets to ex post taxation of corporate bonuses. Who would invest in this climate? Dr. Cochrane believes the current uncertainty is preventing markets from resuming functionality, and could cause an otherwise routine credit crunch to turn into a Great Depression.
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