America had been a boom-and-bust economy going into the Great Depression - just over and over and over, fortunes were wiped out, ordinary families were crushed under it.
The downturn following the collapse of Japan's so-called bubble economy of the 1980s was not as severe as the Great Depression.
Everything I learned about the Great Depression was from a college textbook.
Consider trade protectionism. It's been tried - and found wanting - since the Great Depression.
