The Great Depression was the worse economic crisis in American History. After coming out of World War I, America prospered from approximately a decade of booming economy. The roaring 20's as it is referred to looked as though nothing could go wrong. People were buying stocks and making money and then the stocks were going up due to the fact people were spending more money on goods. Everything was good until people started loosing faith in the stock due to the fact the stock dropped slightly about 4 days before the major crash in October of 1929. Since people were buying on margin, which simply means paying for things with money loaned from the bank, when the market crashed they were hung out to dry.
After Hoover tried to help banks by giving money and trying to keep them opened and his plan failed, many Americans grew angry and tired of Hoover so at the next election FDR was elected. FDR didn't have the same idea as Hoover. He realized that just trying to spend money to bail out big companies as Hoover tried wasn't going to work. He implemented multiple policies that helped the economic situation. He saw that the major problems were poverty and unemployment. He used his New Deal program to help these problems. His New Deal Program was a series of economic measures to help relieve the worst economic problems of the depression.
Since then, there is the FDIC or the Federal Deposit Insurance Company which insures that if a bank fails and your money is lost, the FDIC will refund your money up to $100,000. There is also Social Security, which gives money to people who do not have adequate income. There was also the Glass Steagall Act which separated investment banks and private banks. The difference is that investment banks do not take deposits.
Unless a nuclear war happens which causes a huge nuclear fallout and in turn causes another probably bigger economic crisis, than it is extremely unlikely to have a economic fallout as the same magnitude as the Great Depression. Due to all of the different acts and policies set in place it would be extremely hard for something like this to happen again. Besides aren't we supposed to learn from the past, so it won't be repeated?
