Category File
Great Depression
3 documented theories filed under this subject.
- The Great Reset of 1929The Great Reset of 1929 was the theory that the Great Depression was not merely a collapse caused by speculation, structural weakness, monetary contraction, and financial panic, but a controlled burn of the economy designed to wipe out smaller wealth, reorganize ownership, and tighten elite command over credit and industry. The label “Great Reset” is retrospective, but the theory itself interprets the crash and depression as a deliberate clearing operation. In this view, mass unemployment, bankruptcies, and bank failures were not simply tragic outcomes; they were the mechanism by which an old economic landscape was destroyed and a more centralized one prepared. Because the crash of 1929 really was preceded by speculation and followed by enormous financial concentration and institutional reform, the theory has remained one of the most durable elite-management narratives of the era.
- The Business Plot (1933)The Business Plot was the allegation, publicly made by retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, that wealthy businessmen and political intermediaries sought to recruit him to lead a mass veterans’ movement that could pressure, neutralize, or overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt and replace constitutional government with a more authoritarian arrangement. Butler testified under oath to Congress in 1934, and the investigating committee later stated that there was evidence that such ideas had been discussed and might have been put into execution if financial backers had chosen to proceed. The theory’s power lies in the unusual fact that the alleged coup plot was not merely whispered in rumor but entered the congressional record through a nationally known military figure.
- The Planned DepressionThe Planned Depression was the belief that the Great Depression was not an uncontrolled collapse but a deliberately induced contraction in which the Federal Reserve and allied financial interests shrank the money supply, tightened credit, and triggered foreclosure in order to absorb farms, homes, businesses, and productive assets at distressed prices. In this theory, the crash of 1929 was only the public spectacle; the true mechanism was monetary strangulation. The theory drew strength from the real historical fact that the money supply fell sharply between 1929 and 1933, banks failed in waves, and ownership shifted dramatically as borrowers lost access to credit. The conspiracy version converted monetary failure into intentional liquidation.