Great Depression

Washington University Libraries has created a fully searchable digital resource that brings invaluable oral history about the Great Depression within reach. Authors Maya Angelou and Gore Vidal, longtime New York Times political reporter Warren Moscow and the grandson of Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt are among those interviewed.

FazzariWUSTL economist Steven Fazzari, Ph.D., argues that we have now reached the “Minsky moment,” the time when an unsustainable financial boom turns to bust. “The serious consequences for employment and economic growth in this crisis can be mitigated, but not eliminated, by the defensive financial bailouts that the federal government has initiated,” Fazzari says.

While consumer spending once helped keep the economy healthy, rising consumer debt is the reason it’s getting sick. The root cause of the current economic slowdown in the U.S. goes back several decades, according to an economics professor at Washington University in St. Louis.