Literature Review for My Research Paper

During my research process, I reviewed many articles, scholarly journals, and data. From there, I found opinions that were against or support my thesis statement.

First of all, Simon Johnson, in his article, "The Quiet Coup," argues, "What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression." I strongly agree with his argument since if we don't make fundamental changes to our politics, politicians will let the depression happen. Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Alan Greenspan mentioned that he couldn't prevent the downturn to happen because he knew that politicians wouldn't do anything about it. In addition to Johnson, Barry Eichengreen, in his journal, "A Tale of Two Depressions," claims, "To sum up, globally we are tracking or doing even worse than the Great Depression." Any research could show that Eichengreen is right because we have had the biggest failures in this depression, not during the Great Depression.

Then, I found these interesting writings about unemployment. Catey Hill, in her article, "Can we call it a Depression yet?" argues, "A depression has several definitions including: ... unemployment above 10 percent." I know we have not hit the 10 percent mark yet, but even optimistic economists predict that it is going to happen. Then, what does that mean? Great Depression II. In addition to Hill, one of the most famous economists of our time, Frederic S. Mishkin, states, "During Great Depression, unemployment rose to 25% of the labor force." Honestly, even the most pessimistic economist would not predict 25% unemployment rate during the current depression. There is reason behind that; there was almost no part-time employment during that time and not only that, discouraged workers were counted as unemployed, boosting the rate.

Finally, I found a great journal which clarified the impacts of government failures that burdened the economy and the housing market. The authors, Ansgar Belke and Marcel Wiedmann, criticize the US government for implementing monetary policy to control the housing market. They argue that instead of monetary policy, fiscal policy should be implemented. It is no wonder that the U.S. now has the powerless monetary policy, and having that policy will cause significant pain such as hyper inflation to the economy in the future.