When our economy began to falter in December 2007 and plunged into the current recession in September 2008, many Americans thought back to the horrors and hardships of the Great Depression. The Great Depression proved to be a difficult time for America, a time no one wanted to see again. Sadly, many of the children of the Great Depression lived to witness a time with many similarities, and yet many differences, to the economic crash of 1929. The stock market crash of October 29, 1929 set in motion many events that led to the Great Depression. Depression. Although this day is considered the trigger for the massive economic fallout, the American and global economies had been in turmoil for six months before Black Tuesday, and many other factors contributed to what is known as the worst economic collapse in history. modern. With few regulations. In the stock market in the years before the Great Depression, investors were able to purchase stocks on margin, requiring them only to put down 10%. This caused wild speculation and many people funneled their life savings into the stock market, which led to artificially high prices. After Black Tuesday, many people began to believe that the American banking system would fail. Thousands of people rushed to banks to withdraw their money. With so much production and so little input, banks nationwide began to fail. In the first eight months of 1930, 744 banks failed. During the 1920s only 1% of the population owned 40% of the national wealth. But when the stock market crashed, wealthy entrepreneurs, as well as lower-class citizens, lost everything, and unemployment rates soared. Not only were the high unemployment rates caused by the st... middle of paper... and people simply trying to sell their homes were hurt because there were items available for less. Regulating the percentage of a loan and the ability to make risky loans would help avoid this crisis in the future. In a person's lifetime, a country can go through many wars, be the cause of a global economic crisis and emerge as a world leader, only to somehow fall back into economic hardship. This is the life that many who lived during the Great Depression saw. They must wonder how America missed the salient signs of recession, given that much the same thing had happened just eighty years earlier. The commonalities are vast, the differences few, but the reminder returns to the lesson that people are destined to understand one day: learning from history, because it always repeats itself..