Both the Great Crash of 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith and the Wal-Mart Effect are economic studies, one of how rampant speculation in the stock market caused the destruction of the American economy, the other how exploitation as used as an economic tool by a single large company has caused cheaper goods but a less ethical society. Both authors regard the federal government as complacent and negligent in its duty to properly police the economy: "freed at last of all government regulation or retribution, the market sallied off in to the wild blue yonder" (Galbraith 42). However, Galbraith's fundamental contention is that although clearly better regulation was needed in terms of how securities were traded and to curtail the over-willingness of banks to lend, the real reason for the Crash of 1929 was not simply the state of the stock market, but the structure of the American economy as a...
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