Other Depressions


This page is still under construction.

Until then, information on several past depressions is available at The Great Financial Panics in History page, part of the Princeton Economics Institute website.

There are six depressions in American history that are thought to be the worst since detailed records of economic data started to be kept (around 1867), 1873-79, 1893-97 (actually two contractions separated by an incomplete expansion), 1907-08, 1920-21, 1929-33, and 1937-38.  Two other episodes also deserve a look, the banking panics of 1819 and 1837.
 


The Banking Panic of 1819


Under Construction
 

Note: the complete text of Murray Rothbard's The Panic of 1819 is now online as a PDF file. Click here to get the reader from Adobe.

The Banking Panic of 1837


Under Construction
 

October 1873 through March 1879


Under Construction
 

January 1893 through June 1894 and December 1895 through June 1897


Under Construction
 
 

May 1907 through June 1908


Under Construction
 
 

Janurary 1920 through July 1921

Hall and Ferguson note that:
[Economic expansion] came to an abrupt halt in 1920, and the economy was in a free fall by 1921. The cause of the decline is debated; Friedman and Schwartz argue that restrictive monetary policy in the United States ended the boom (1963, 237), while Aldcoft contends that the initial cause was an end to the artificial boom assocatied with spculation, although retrictive monetary policies certainly made it worse (1983, 13).