How the 1930s banking crises prolonged the Great Depression

The Wall Street crash wasn’t the only stockmarket crash of the Twenties. So how did it turn into one of the longest economic downturns in modern history? John Stepek explains.

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How did the Wall Street Crash turn into one of the longest economic downturns in history?
(Image credit: 2010 Getty Images)

Last week, we began looking at why the 1929 stockmarket crash turned into the Great Depression. The crash itself, of course, signalled the start of one of the longest economic downturns in modern history.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.