I don’t have my father anymore; he passed away in 1984, of cancer. It attacked him quickly, turning him from a vigorous 70 year-old to a pale shadow of himself in less than two years, and perhaps in the end that was merciful. He spent the last few months of his life in pain, but never allowed that pain to affect his demeanor, never letting himself become bitter or discouraged. When the doctor’s told him that he could be treated for a time, but was ultimately terminal regardless, he decided to save the family from financial ruin by accepting his mortality, and deciding to die with dignity, and honor intact.

My father taught me well how to be a man; both by his life and his death he showed me the way to walk through life with honor. The example he set for me sustains me even today; when making a tough decision, I still imagine him looking over my shoulder & telling me to make the decision that allows everyone involved to keep their self-respect and meet their own needs, by telling the truth tempered with compassion, and having the couraqe to take the responsibility for my actions.

In today’s world, surviving with one’s sanity intact is a perpetual challenge. Human society has, for some time now, begun to suffer the effects of overpopulation. Everyone alive today knows what happens when overcrowded living conditions reach a critical point; we all performed, or at least read or heard about, the experiment with a rodent population allowed to reach that point. Increasing violence and abberrant behavior, breakdown of societal norms, food, water, & shelter become items of primary import. Ultimately, the colony dies, and being human does not shelter us as a species from the simple, deadly fact of this aspect of living in an increasingly unbalanced ecosphere.

One of the symptoms of impending disaster, the “breakdown of societal norms”, is the unfortunate evolution of the norm for a “family” in today’s world. The two-parent household is no longer the majority in today’s society; one parent households are just a common. And this simple fact means that, of the children growing up today, less than half will have an effective male, or female, role model in the home. Many children will not have either a mother or father figure available, or will have that role filled by grandparents or extended family, or by people outside the home such as teachers.

This phenomenon is not necessarily all bad; in my experience, even folks who aren’t terribly good at parenting are at least doing their best. But it does mean that society in the future will be different, very different, and can only contribute to the general overall confusion in society. Humanity has a very challenging era rushing upon it, and significant changes will need to be made, and survived.

My father, whom I honor every day, was part of what may be the last generation ever to have the majority of families with a traditional make-up. I hope the model that society evolves in coming years will create in children the same feelings of self-worth, confidence, and compassion for others that my father, and mother, were able to teach to me. If it is, then I believe there is hope for humanity. If not, then the time of critical danger is apporoaching all too fast……

One of the things Bernanke said he would in the 2002 speech, in addition to devaluing the currency 40%, was to keep interest rates at or near zero percent.  Bernanke with his speech and actions sure believes that we are in a Depression and he is right.  Not only does he still believe we are in a depression, but he also thinks the Depression will continue through at least the end of 2014.  Bernanke said he would keep the interest rates at or near zero until then.  Bernanke has kept interests rate at or near zero since late 2008. 

In the linked Yahoo article, Bernanke says he is not even worried about inflation.  Anyone who goes to the grocery store or gas station knows that inflation is becoming a big problem and will only get worse.  Bernanke’s track is the wrong one, in my humble opinion. 

            Bernanke studied the Great Depression of 1929-1945 in detail.  Obviously, the man is not concerned with inflation.  This is confirmed in this 2002 speech as he is scared of the evils of deflation, declining, rather than rising prices.   This nine page speech talks about everything he would do if another great depression hit.  A great recession hit of course 2007-date and peaked in the fall of 2008 and is still with us at the end of 2011 in spite what anyone says. So, when he became chairman of the FED and the crisis hit in 2008, he did exactly what he said he would do in this speech. 

First, he cut interest rates to near zero.  Everyone says that he has run out of “ammunition” because interest rates are zero.  He disagrees.  He likes some inflation which he calls a “buffer zone” to deflation.  He would rather prop the economy up rather than take a short term fall and lead into a real recovery.  Compare this to a junkie getting off of drugs.  He will have a bad headache for a while, but in the long term, he will be better off. 

Next, he said he would print money.  Many people get the definition of inflation wrong.  Inflation occurs when the government (or the privately owned FED) prints more money in circulation.  The rising prices are only a symptom of the government-caused inflation.  More dollars are chasing the same amount of goods, so prices have to go up. 

 The next thing Bernanke said he would do is buy the debt himself.  As we know, the Fed is the no. 1 creditor of the United States because no else, even China, are buying the Treasury bonds.  The FED makes money out of “thin air”, or make money from digital bits on a computer.  Then they loan the “money” to the US Government.  The Government, really the taxpayers, have to pay this back with interest.  This is why we have a $15 trillion national debt and rising. 

 Everything that Bernanke said he would do in this 2002 speech he has done.  The last thing should scare the hell out of everyone.  If the depression persisted, Bernanke would do what President Roosevelt did in 1933.  FDR stole the gold of the people of the country for $20 an ounce.  He then sold it for $35 an ounce.  This amounted to a devaluing of the currency by about 40% almost overnight.  So, during a time of Depression when it may have been good to reduce the costs of things to get people to buy them, inflation went from negative 10.3 percent  in 1932 to negative 5.1 percent in 1933 to positive 3.4 percent in 1934.  Was it good that things got more expensive in a depression?  I don’t think so.  I also don’t think it was good that people had their old seized and the paper dollar value (their spending power) was reduced 40% in one year when the price of goods went up. 

 I don’t know what 2012 will hold.  I would not be happy to know that the dollar will be devalued 40% and that spending power will be reduced that much if my holdings were in US dollars.  Bernanke has done what he said he would do.  Expect him to continue in this time of depression.

Please read my follow up piece. http://socyberty.com/issues/gold-price-org-reads-article-bernanke-devaluing-dollar-40/

In the film adaptation of Water for Elephants, Robert Pattinson takes us to life on the road in the circus after the great depression.  He is in for a rude awakening once he is told that his parents died in a car crash, and that he is without any money.  He takes to the road, and we get to experience the brutality of life in the thirties, when there was not any safety net for Americans, and you had to learn how to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, if you wanted to continue to live.

He finds himself infatuated with Marlena, the wife of August, a circus owner.  To make a long story short, he gets his butt kicked again, and again, and yet again, and cheats death attempting to be with Marlena.  In the end, his saving grace is an elephant, and him and Marlena life a regular life for a minute while he finishes his degree as a veterinarian, and he then provides a comfortable life for her while she works in the circus.  

I have mixed feelings about this film.  It comes across as thinly veiled attempt to make Robert Pattinson the hero that Leonardo DiCaprio played as Jack Dawson in the film Titanic; a punk that is willing to go to any lengths to get the girl of his dreams, that just happens to be the girl of someone else, despite getting knocked down again and again.  Robert Pattinson represents a new generation of men whose masculinity is measured by their resolve and dedication to their woman, even though they lack the outward, traditional masculinity of men from a bygone era.  These are not your man’s favorite man, but they are the sensitive, yet dedicated, man who will take a bullet for you, even if he does look like a punk doing so.  

Having said that much, I felt that, while you could pass this film off on a new generation, this is definitely a film that we have seen before.  While I do feel that Robert Pattinson is a great actor, this is a mere characterization of the “new man”, post-modern, and the same punk that he plays in all of his films, most notably in Remember Me (2010).  He simply has the great luck to play this typecast character in a tremendous setting, alongside great talent. The fact that he gets to play opposite Reese Witherspoon is a definite improvement from his cast in the Twilight series.  

Acting may not be what it was as little as a decade ago but there are still some great films to be found.  The fact that Robert Pattinson is a character that you can learn to hate, shows just how great of an actor he is capable of being.  He simply has not had the opportunity to prove that to American audiences, but this is one interesting film in which he is allowed to make his case.  However, the fact that he never gets to work in films with story lines that are as engaging as say, what Johnny Depp routinely acts in, speaks volumes to the detachment that Hollywood has and the lack of integrity.  Far too often, films like Water for Elephants are buried underneath the excitement for another installation of Shrek, translating The Smurfs onto the big screen, a reboot of The Muppets, or Puss n’ Boots.  While a lot of these remakes and reboots have been successful, and paid off for the studios, new, fresh material is desperately needed in Hollywood.  When movies like Water for Elephants fail, it is obvious why audiences are quick to watch The Smurfs.  

America was hurting during the great depression. From 1929 to 1933, unemployment in the U.S. increased from 4% to 25%, and manufacturing output decreased by one third. Prices fell by 20%, causing a deflation which made the repayments of debts much harder. The mining, lumber, construction, and farming sectors were hit especially hard, along with railroads and heavy industries such as steel and automobiles. When President Roosevelt was accepted in to office in 1932, he promised “a new deal for the American people”.

The First New Deal dealt with the immediate reform of banks and addressed the growing unemployment rate. Starting in 1933, Congress passed the bank act and the Economy Act. The Bank Act provided for a system of reopening sound banks under Treasury supervision, with federal loans available if needed. Three-quarters of the banks in the Federal Reserve System reopened within the next three days after being closed. Billions of dollars in hoarded currency and gold flowed back into them within a month, thus stabilizing the banking system. The economy act proposed to balance the “regular” (non-emergency) federal budget by cutting the salaries of government employees and cutting pensions to veterans by fifteen percent. It saved $500 million per year.

 The New deal also helped to create jobs for artisans, women, minorities and farmers. The Federal writers program provided jobs to be record keepers, folklore preservers and guide book makers. Other related programs were the Federal theater project and the Federal Art Project. Many women were employed on FERA projects run by the states with federal funds. The first New Deal program to directly assist women was the Works Progress Administration (WPA), begun in 1935. It hired single women, widows, or women with disabled or absent husbands. Many different programs were directed at farmers as well. The first 100 days produced the Farm Security Act to raise farm incomes by raising the prices farmers received, which was achieved by reducing total farm output.

The Second New Deal is thought of as part 2 to the New deal. It is characterized by a redistribution of wealth and many welfare programs to help out the needy. Roosevelt called for three major goals: improved use of national resources, security against old age, unemployment and illness, and slum clearance, as well as a national welfare program (the WPA) to replace state relief efforts. The most important programs included Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act (”Wagner Act”) and rural electrification. The Social Security Act gave assurance to people with disabilities while the The National Labor Relations Act Made working conditions better.

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Overall, The New Deals were defiantly an improvement to America. Some of the Acts and programs still live on even through today. The Deals brought America back from the tipping point and back in to normalcy.

The Return of the Female Figure
Where once the rectangular “boyish” shape ruled the fashion world, the 1930s brought back the natural curves of a woman. This can be partly credited to the effects of the Great Depression. How? The lack of money had sent many clothing companies trying to find ways to make clothes at a cheaper cost. This meant that clothing styles became simpler. The return of the female figure allowed the fashions to remain feminine.

The Fashions
As elaborate, intricate clothing became rare in the 1930s, designers turned to experimenting with different “cuts” for dresses. This allowed designers to create elaborate new styles, but without the cost of any extra fabric or adornments. A popular style—mostly found in evening dresses—was the bias cut dress. It was normally a simple sleeveless long gown with a plunging back. As for day dresses, popular styles were suit-like dresses and shirtwaist dresses. Shirtwaist dresses were becoming popular as they helped show off a woman’s figure. These shirtwaist dresses were narrow at the waist, and had a sleek silhouette. The patterns of these shirtwaist dresses varied from plain, floral and so on. Cloches were still worn, as well as floppy sun hats decorated with a simple bow, a lace veil, or fake flowers. As for shoes, the heel was still modest, and styles varied from a simple pump, the T-Strap shoes, and oxford style heels. It was all simplistic but stylish. Although the clothing became much simpler compared to the 1920s, the hairstyles of the 1930s became more elegant. Soft curls were in. They usually were just past the ear, but not quite past the shoulder.

The Makeup
With the movies becoming a popular pastime due to the Great Depression, many women began turning to makeup to look like the flawless women of the big screen. The pale look was in, accompanied with a colorful eye shadow and a red lip. Eye shadow colors now ranged from blues, greens, purple and the safe neutrals—browns. As for the lip colors, they ranged from a bright to deep reds, and again, the safe neutrals—browns. Blushes were always a light pink or a neutral brown-red. Nail polish became popular and ranged in shades that matched the lipstick or were neutral colors—reds and creams. They were painted a specific way; the tips and the “half moon” part of the nail were left unpainted.

In 2007, the top 1 percent share of national income peaked at 23.5 percent. The only other year since 1913 that the wealthy had claimed such a large share of national income was 1928, when the top 1 percent share was 23.9 percent. The following year, the stock market crashed, and the Great Depression began. After peaking again in 2007 the U.S. stock market again crashed in 2008, leading to what some are now calling the “Great Recession. [i]

                Source: Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998,”

                Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(1), 2003. Updated to 2008 at http://emlab.berkeley.edu/users/saez

Republicans today, like President Herbert Hoover in 1928, subscribe to political theory that government should refrain from interfering with the natural course of recovery in the economic organism and should instead reduce the size of government. They are reluctant to depart from in any significant way  the old obsolete policies of laissez-faire. [i]  This political thought is no less bankrupt today than it was in 1928 when the Republican Hoover Administration caused the Great Depression. It is instructive to compare what the Republicans did then that caused the Great Depression with what they did to cause the Great Recession. History repeated itself.

The “new imperative,” said Walter Lippmann [i]in 1934 “was that government accept responsibility for the living standards of the people. No one can seriously believe any longer in the neutral state [of laissez-faire government].” That statement applies just as much today just as it did in 1934. Hoovers tendency during the Great Depression, was to subordinate real human needs to his fanatical desire for ideological consistency [ii]as repeated again by George W. Bush, another Republican ideologue, and his Federal Reserve Bank Chairman, Alan Greenspan. Their idiotic ideas of self-regulating markets [modern day laissez-faire] and deregulation caused the Great Recession America is now suffering from.

The top 1 percent of households in the United States took home 21 percent of the nation’s pretax income in 2008, up from 9 percent in 1976. The top 1% of households controlled 36 percent of the nation’s private wealth in 2009. This type of income imbalance happened before when 6.5 million farm families, or 22% of the nation’s population in 1920, received only 15% of the national income. This income decreased to 9% in 1928, and decreased again to only 7% in 1932. [i] This income imbalance resulted in the Great Depression.

At the core of the Brain Truster’s theory for curing, the Great Depression (the group of University Professors tasked by FDR with defining policies to cure the depression) was the idea of “balance.” At that time in America, the imbalance of income was between those practicing agriculture and those working in industry. More than one in five working Americans still toiled on the land in the 1920s. Forty per-cent of the population was still counted as rural in 1930. The Brain Trust’s idea was to increase farmers’ income as a means of bolstering demand for domestic industrial products.

Addressing the imbalance in income between those Americans practicing agriculture and those in industry constituted the essence of Roosevelt’s anti-depression strategy. In notes appended to his 1938 official papers, Roosevelt explained again that he deemed “the continual lack of adequate purchasing power on the part of the farmer “to be one of the most important reasons for the depression.” [i]  While farmers’ living standards eroded through the 1920s, real wages for industrial workers rose by nearly 25%. By 1928, average per capita income among non-agricultural employees had reached four times the average level of farmers’ incomes. [ii]   By 1932, Agricultural income had plunged by almost 60% from even the 1928 level. By early 1933, banks were foreclosing on farm mortgages at a rate of some 20,000 per month. Compare this with the foreclosure rate in October 2011 of 230,678 U.S. properties, and one in every 563 U.S. housing units. Today’s recession and high level of unemployment is caused by the imbalance of income between those at the top of America’s income distribution and the vast majority of those in the middle and lower classes. An income disparity that is much wider today than even that which caused the Great Depression.

By early 1932, well over 10 million persons were out of work, nearly 20% of the labor force. In big cities like Chicago and Detroit that were home to capital goods industries like steel making and automobile manufacturing, the unemployment rate approached 50%.  Perhaps one-third of all employed persons were working part time so that in the aggregate, almost 50% of the nation’s workers were being under utilized.

In America today 13.9 million people are out of work representing 9 % of the workforce. The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was another 8.9 million people in October. Almost 25% of the nation’s workers are currently under utilized today.

Rexford Tugwell, the Brain Truster said, “The unemployed are fellow human beings; it is a downright economic necessity that they should continue to be consumers. The system has broken down because goods … could not be bought by men who are out of work. What businessmen did not seem to realize was that their first need was customers with incomes to spend.” [i]  Put another way, lack of demand by the unemployed and poverty stricken for goods and services today is causing the current Great Recession just like the Great Depression.

Robert B. Reich the former secretary of labor, and now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley states in an article published in the New York Times,  “When so much income goes to the top, the middle class doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going . . . It’s no mere coincidence that over the last century the top earners’ share of the nation’s total income peaked in 1928 and in 2007 — the two years just preceding the biggest [economic] downturns [in the period.]”

The major reason for this tremendous income disparity over the last decade is the George W. Bush tax cuts. In spite of the deceitful Republicans lying through their teeth, Congressional Budget Office data quoted by Bruce Bartlett shows that the Bush tax cuts [taxes were cut in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2006 during the Bush Administration] did not bring the country a higher rate of economic growth, even temporarily, but instead, Bush’s tax cuts served to skew income to the rich and bleed the other income groups in America dry. Real G.D.P. growth peaked at just 3.6 percent in 2004 before fading rapidly. Even before the Republican financial deregulation caused the financial crisis which caused the great recession, real G.D.P. was growing less than 2 percent a year.

      Source: Congressional Budget Office

Bartlett writes further, “Few people remember that a major justification for the 2001 tax cut was to intentionally slash the budget surplus [yes, the Clinton Administration budget surplus].  Bush said this repeatedly during the 2000 campaign, and it was reiterated in his February 2001 budget. The result was the intellectually challenged Bush not only eliminated the Clinton budget surplus, according to a recent  C.B.O. report, he also reduced revenue by at least $2.9 trillion below what it otherwise would have been between 2001 and 2011. Slower-than-expected growth reduced revenue by another $3.5 trillion. In addition, the warmonger Bush’s two unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in spending that was $5.6 trillion higher than the C.B.O. anticipated for a total fiscal turnaround of $12 trillion. (See the attached tabulation.) That is how the $6 trillion projected Clinton Administration surplus turned into a cumulative deficit of $6 trillion. The Republicans bitch about a budget deficit they caused and refuse to raise income to remedy the situation.

            Now the OCCUPY WALL STREET and its allied movements around the country are growing stronger. They are most likely the start of a new Progressive movement  in America “The young people in Zuccotti Park and more than 1,000 cities have started America on a path to renewal. Bend over Republicans and get ready.

[1]  http://inequality.org/income-inequality/ referenced 11/9/11.

[1]  Ibid

[1]  Kennedy, David M., Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. P. 63.

[1]  Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., The Age of Roosevelt: The Coming of the New Deal 1919-1933,Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1959. P. 492.

[1]  Kennedy, David M., Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. P. 63

[1]  Rosen, Elliot A., Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Brains Trust: From Depression to New Deal, New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1977. P. 237.

[1]  Kennedy, David M., Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. P. 140.

[1]  Ibid. p. 22.

[1]  Tugwell, Rexford Guy, The Brains Trust, New York: Viking Press, 1968. P.16.

[i]  Tugwell, Rexford Guy, The Brains Trust, New York: Viking Press, 1968. P.16.

[i]  Kennedy, David M., Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. P. 140.

[ii]  Ibid. p. 22.

[i]  Rosen, Elliot A., Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Brains Trust: From Depression to New Deal, New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1977. P. 237.

[i]  Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., The Age of Roosevelt: The Coming of the New Deal 1919-1933,Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1959. P. 492.

[ii]  Kennedy, David M., Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. P. 63

Together they put forward compelling arguments to back up their assertion that severe financial crises are in fact part and parcel of capitalism, instead of been one off black swans. Being part of the natural capitalist economic cycle means that there are ways in which businesses and governments can avoid the worst consequences of such crashes.

It is shame that many businesses and governments have not heeded such sound guidance. This book provides sound arguments as to why so many strategies pursued by businesses and governments are unlikely to succeed in pulling the world out of recession.

Even though some of the facts in this book are frightening, it is one of the most readable economics texts available.

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Since I work at The Wall Street Journal, the people I meet often ask me questions as to mislead the economy, such as “Why is it so bad” and “When is it better to go?”. Unfortunately for them, I have no great answer to give. Two reasons: 1) I am not an expert, economist, or even a professional writer who is paid to research and write the economy every day, my colleague, the Wall Street Journal. I’m just a guy who has an alarm goes off an hour before dawn, and spent most of his time reading and looking at what others say, looking in the mood to make sense of all my public / government school education. 2) No one knows when it will be better. Even the best and the brightest are baffled.

Constantly asked “When will it get better?” He also asked me wonder … are things really that bad for most of us, or are simply unable to survive a prolonged recession? My grandfather came of age during the Great Depression, an economic “slowdown” that has lasted, not 3 or 5 years

years, but more than ten years … ends very soon, because the second world war. In these dark economic times of the people who had barely scraping without the government programs that we have today in the form of welfare, social security and unemployment. My grandfather, his parents, and the rest of his generation had to make real sacrifices to imagine that many people today just to put food in their bellies and clothes on his back. Growing up in the ERA took my grandfather in a cheapskate permanently (or so it seemed to me when I was a child), that 50 years later, he fought the waiters more than the discrepancy of a few hundredths of a check restaurant, and has coached Honestly, the age of schooling, how to get the most bang to my buck buffet dinner. This generation, in which the phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle” has been more than a simple call to save the planet, had a way of life.

Fast forward to today. While unemployment continues to sit at a level far too high and there are more Americans face the problems that there have probably been in my life, most of us still have a roof over their heads, food on the table, a smartphone in our pockets, high speed internet, and TV large flat screen with 500 channels in the lounge.

For those of us lucky enough to have a job, what our grandparents think of us spend hundreds of dollars a month just to entertain in the latest gadget, or food, because what we do “is to feel like

cooking “or” do not have time to do lunch tomorrow? “What they think of us make the car payments eternal because we do not want to drive a car that is” old? “What they would like to drive up huge credit card debt to pay for extravagances, and others, does not give us money in our bank accounts, and very little breathing space, if we lose our jobs? And what would they say to us when we come home from our jobs (we are so lucky that is), and complaints of not being “satisfied” or how our careers are not “proceeds as expected “?

You might say something like “back in my day … (blah blah blah)” Even though they generally do not want to hear about the difficulties of the older generations, we must always take seriously the warnings our old, when it comes to money matters. When they were growing, was the survival of the fittest. If we had the bad news at work today, I doubt that many of us would be terribly unfit to survive.

Mike Gavin is an occasional blogger, and producer of “Wall Street Journal This Morning” and “Wall Street Journal this weekend” nationally syndicated radio programs. The views expressed are personal and not necessarily those of Wall Street Journal, is the parent, or affiliate radio stations.

Examples of the different types of global exchanges which took place before the seventeenth century:

1) Textiles, spices and Chinese pottery were exchanged by China, India and Southeast Asia in return for gold and silver from Europe.

2) Gold and foods such as potatoes, soya, groundnuts, tomatoes and chillies were first exported from the Americas to Europe.

(a) The British government’s decision to abolish the Corn Laws resulted in losses for the agricultural sector, but progress in the industrial sector. Food began to be imported more cheaply into Britain, and thousands of workers involved in cultivation became unemployed. However, consumption increased and the industrial sector grew, with more workers being available in cities than in rural areas.

(b) The coming of rinderpest to Africa caused a loss of livelihood for countless Africans. Using this situation to their advantage, colonising nations conquered and subdued Africa by monopolising scarce cattle resources to force Africans into the labour market.

(c) The death of men of working age in Europe because of the World War reduced the able-bodied workforce in Europe, leading to a steady decline in household incomes and a consequent struggle to meet the living expenditure by families whose men were handicapped or killed.

(d) The Great Depression had a major impact on the Indian economy. Between 1928 and 1934, it reduced Indian imports and exports by nearly half. Wheat prices too fell by 50% during this time. More than the urban areas, the agricultural sector (which dominated livelihoods in rural lands) was badly hit by the Great Depression.

(e) The decision of MNCs to relocate production to Asian countries led to a stimulation of world trade and capital flows. This relocation was on account of low-cost structure and lower wages in Asian countries. It also benefitted the Asian nations because employment increased, and this resulted in quick economic transformation as well.

The global transfer of disease in the pre-modern world helped in the colonisation of the Americas because the native American Indians were not immune to the diseases that the settlers and colonisers brought with them. The Europeans were more or less immune to small pox, but the native Americans, having been cut off from the rest of the world for millions of years, had no defence against it. These germs killed and wiped out whole communities, paving the way for foreign domination. Weapons and soldiers could be destroyed or captured, but diseases could not be fought against.

The impact of technology on food availability was manifold in the late nineteenth century. Faster railways, lighter wagons and larger ships helped transport food more cheaply and quickly from production units to even faraway markets. Also, refrigerated ships helped transport perishable foods such as meat, butter and eggs over long distances

The Bretton Woods Agreement was finalised in July 1944 at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire, USA. It established the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to preserve global economic stability and full employment in the industrial world. These institutions also dealt with external surpluses and deficits of member nations, and financed post-war reconstructions.

Indentured Indian labourers in the Carribbean—facts—signed a contract stating that they would return to India after working for five years at a plantation; belonged to eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, central India and the dry districts of Tamil Nadu; migrants took up the overseas jobs hoping to escape poverty and oppression in their home villages; migrants were not even informed about the long sea voyages, and some unwilling ones were abducted as well; also known as “the new system of slavery”; harsh living and working conditions; few legal rights; many escaped into the wilds; some developed new art forms for expression; some returned home after the contract period, while others stayed on

The three types of movements or flows within the international economic exchange are trade flows, human capital flows and capital flows or investments. These can be explained as—the trade in agricultural products, migration of labour, and financial loans to and from other nations.

India was a hub of trade in the pre-modern world, and it exported textiles and spices in return for gold and silver from Europe. Many different foods such as potatoes, soya, groundnuts, maize, tomatoes, chillies and sweet potatoes came to India from the Americas after Columbus discovered it.

In the field of labour, indentured labour was provided for mines, plantations and factories abroad, in huge numbers, in the nineteenth century. This was an instrument of colonial domination by the British.

Lastly, Britain took generous loans from USA to finance the World War. Since India was an English colony, the impact of these loan debts was felt in India too. The British government increased taxes, interest rates, and lowered the prices of products it bought from the colony. Indirectly, but strongly, this affected the Indian economy and people.

The Great Depression was a result of many different factors. The post-war global economy was weak. Also, agricultural over-production proved to be a nuisance, which was made worse by falling food grain prices. To counter this, farmers began to increase production and bring even more produce to the markets to maintain their annual incomes. This led to such a glut of food grains that prices plummeted further and farm produce was left to rot. Most countries took loans from the US, but American overseas lenders were wary about the same. When they decreased the amount of loans, the countries economically dependent on US loans faced an acute crisis. In Europe, this led to the failure of major banks and currencies such as the British pound sterling. In a bid to protect the American economy, USA doubled import duties. This worsened the world trade scenario. All these factors contributed to the Great Depression. It affected USA the worst on account of its being a global loan provider and the biggest industrial nation.

G-77 countries is an abbreviation for the group of 77 countries that demanded a new international economic order (NIEO); a system that would give them real control over their natural resources, without being victims of neo-colonialism, that is, a new form of colonialism in trade practised by the former colonial powers.

The G-77 can be seen as a reaction to the activities of the Bretton Woods twins (the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) because these two institutions were designed to meet the financial needs of industrial and developed countries, and did nothing for the economic growth of former colonies and developing nations.