Uploaded March 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago

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We cover the causes of the Great Depression, including the stock market crash of 1929, bank runs, and deflation under the gold standard.

Resources on the Great Depression: federalreservehistory.org/time_period?inFields=Time%2520Period:Great%2520Depression

2:36 Start of Lecture
2:53 Not Talking about your Friday nights
3:25 World's Highest Standard of Living
4:17 The Great Depression
6:26 GDP graph
8:43 Value Proposition
11:43 Real vs Monetary Policy Shocks
15:09 How does the Federal Reserve affect the economy?
15:46 How does the Fed affect the economy?
17:02 Example of insufficient reserves
18:55 Example of excess reserves
21:55 Overnight Lending
23:33 The Fed influences the Federal Funds Rate
25:48 How does the federal funds rate affect other interest rates?
32:37 Expansionary vs Contractionary Policy
38:44 What were the conditions leading up to the Great Depression?
43:06 The Roaring Twenties
45:19 Margin Purchase
45:55 Example of Margin Purchase
49:38 Stock Market was Booming
50:45 Risks of margin purchases
53:04 What caused the Great Depression?
53:46 Great Depression is like psychological depression
55:23 Fed was scared of a stock market bubble
56:23 Stock Market Crash of 1929
58:29 Stock market graph
59:08 Fed does nothing
59:45 Bank Failures
1:01:08 Image of a bank run
1:01:20 Banks as Intermediaries
1:02:51 Gold pressure
1:03:48 Deflation after crash
1:04:26 Deflation
1:04:59 Perfect Storm
1:05:45 Why didn't the Fed act?
1:07:28 Could the Fed have done more?
1:07:42 Real Shocks
1:09:36 Hawley
1:10:30 Reed Smoot
1:11:07 Tariff did not cause Great Depression
1:12:06 Dust Bowl image
1:12:41 Dust Bowl
1:13:19 Migration Response
1:13:30 What caused the Dust Bowl?
1:14:55 Conclusion