On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we ask if a brother can spare a dime and look back at the horrible decade known as The Great Depression. This was the roughest period of global finance in the modern world, and it saw American crippled with unemployment, bank closures, farm closures, and suicides the likes of which the world has never seen before or sense. Was it a fluke of bad economics or a conspiracy by the 1% in charge of the economy? Listen and be the judge.

After a period of (artificial) economic growth in American known as the Roaring Twenties, the bottom dropped out of just about everything, and the economic world took a nose dive. This was caused by several factors and culminated in the infamous Black Thursday where billions of dollars and millions of shares of stock were lost all in a day (and even more were lost the following Tuesday). This famously led to scores of suicides by investors, and it crippled the global economy. In the midst of all this turmoil, there was also ecological problems as the Dust Bowl crippled farming in the middle of America.

With no money, layoffs were epidemic. In most of the nation, 25% of Americans had no work, and in some spots, it was as high as 80% or 90%. Banks collapsed since there was no money left for people to withdraw, and some estimates are that roughly half the children in the nation were left without enough food, medical care, or even a place to live thanks to the Great Depression.

So, why do some people think this whole thing was a conspiracy theory? Who would stand to gain from such a horrible turn of events? What does this have to with the American federal banking system? What did President Hoover do that was so hated, and what did his replacement FDR do that was so loved? How long did it take for the economy to recover? He brother, can you spare a dime? Where do the Rothschilds, the Kennedys, and the Rockefellers come in? Listen, laugh, learn.