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Wall Street Essay

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In 1938, and in the teeth of the longest and fiercest depression that the United States had ever known, capital spending hit an all time high. That’s right! In 1938 the men who owned America began to pour millions of Dollars into new plant and equipment as if there was no tomorrow. We don’t think much about it today, because it has been a long time since the United States has experienced a real bone jolting economic slowdown. The fact is, however, that the very best time for the industrialist to invest in new technologies is in the middle of a depression. This is because it is at such times that labor, raw materials, and new equipment can be purchased at rock bottom prices. Henry Ford may have jumped the gun a bit. He shut down his River …show more content…

There are probably two reasons for this. In the first place, Schumpeter's magnum opus on the business cycle came out on the eve of the Second World War. As the dark clouds of war began to cast their shadow over Europe, Asia, and eventually the United States, economists (and everyone else) clearly had more pressing concerns. Not only that, but it was also clear to Americans that the US Army would soon take care of the problems of excess supply being experienced in the labor market. It was also quite obvious to everyone that the factories were about to start humming again, this time to produce for war.

After the conflict, of course, and all the way through the 1970s, it was widely believed that the business cycle had been "repealed" by means of the clever economic manipulations suggested by the British Lord John Maynard Keynes. College kids in the halcyon 1960s were taught by their professors that the economy was not one of scarcity, but, rather, of endless abundance. The Great Society had arrived. Keynesian economics was in its glory days. This new body of thought and practice was one of the British Empire's last and most influential exports. If Keneysianism had, indeed, hung the business cycle by the neck until dead, then the only decent thing to do was to bury the corpse. Schumpeter's text, unfortunately, was placed alongside the remains of business

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