[theseus51]

It was the fed printing too much money to begin with. Yeah, there was a "gold standard", but the fed kept printing money anyway. The only reason we went off the gold standard in 1933 was too many people wanted to redeem their paper federal reserve notes for real gold. We went off the gold standard once that couldn't be achieved, because there wasn't enough real gold to back the worthless pieces of paper issued be the fed.

What that means, is we never really had a gold standard to begin with. If we did, we wouldn't have run out of gold, and be forced to confiscate everyone's gold to make up the difference, as FDR did.

Cheap credit caused people to over invest and over speculate, leading to bubbles, which eventually burst. The depression of 1929 may not happen in exactly the same way (what two recessions are exactly the same anyway?). But I fear the federal reserve has set us up for a big downturn in the coming years.