What would be politics today if the Great Depression never happened?
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Without the New Deal to feed his megalomania, Franklin Roosevelt returns to his first loves: Wilsonian imperialism and the building of a bigger navy. So, the long cold war with Japan may get hot sooner than it did in our time line, and there would be lots of intervention in the Western Hemisphere. (Attached is my favorite picture of "That Woman's Husband," a pistol-packing, khaki-wearing assistant secretary of the Navy, in Haiti, not long after drafting a constitution for that unfortunate republic.)
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Way too many butterflies, hard to say. Every poster could come up with their own version and be just as 'accurate' and plausible. The history of the last 90 years could have gone many different ways without the huge impact of the Great Depression.
A few financial reforms would take care of the worst of it. Earlier SEC, Glass-Steagall, and FDIC.
Any or all of these would have been some of the most sweeping financial reforms in American history (apart from the struggles over the National bank a century before). it is hard to imagine any of them being put in place before they are needed.
The question should be, "what if the Depression is lessened." The stock market crash was only a trigger over bad investment practice. In my opinion, a bigger factor was the saturation of the steel market. Railroads reached their maximum penetration and no more new lines were needed. Small spurs were already being abandoned in favor of motor vehicles. Skyscrapers and automobiles would not offset the decreased demand for steel by the railroads. So the economy slows down. To make it worse Glass-Steagall and the Dust Bowl would only compound problems. So, the 1929 crash could have been mitigated with regulation (fat chance).
Interesting variants could be "what if we got a normal recession in the mid 20s and the Depression is delayed".
I imagine *great depression analogues in 1939 or 1949 could be interesting.
I imagine *great depression analogues in 1939 or 1949 could be interesting.
Please use the Post-1900 Misc. thread for these sorts of WI.
You need to actually start a discussion not just ask a question or issue an AH challenge
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You need to actually start a discussion not just ask a question or issue an AH challenge
Miscellaneous >1900 (Alternate) History Thread
It is often the case that people on this forum have miscellaneous or frivolous questions that could be easily answered by the many experts on this forum but are difficult to find the answer to on Google Scholar/Books or Wikipedia because they don't often deal in alternatives. There are other...
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