[lbo-talk] it's over - now the destruction really begins

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Mar 10 07:29:50 PDT 2009


This conversation made me look up the economic stats to see how the major powers fared during the 1930s. Here are the changes in GDP (total, not annualized) for some major players, from the 1929 peak to the crash low followed by the recovery/expansion into 1939:

Germany Italy Japan UK US

1929 to low -23.5% -3.1% -7.3% -5.8% -28.5%

year of low 1932 1933 1930 1931 1933 low to 1939 +79.1% +27.3% +71.5% +26.9% +43.2%

So, the depression was deepest and longest in the U.S. and Germany. Italy, Japan, and the UK got off fairly lightly. Germany and Japan had the strongest recoveries - a function, no doubt, of fascist Keynesianism. I can't say that this clarifies the relation, if any, between depression and world war.

Doug



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