The first year of the Great Depression, 1930, the USA ran a budget surplus! Can you imagine that today? You should! The Depression of 1920-21 had a steeper deflation rate than 1933, the worst year of the Great Depression.

Why do we call call one decade the Roaring ’20s & the other the Great Depression of the 1930s? One had a classical economics policy response & the other a “progressive” policy response. What’s the difference?