Countries attempting to return to the Gold Standard by using Deflationary policies (just as China manipulates its currency/economy to force HIGH export levels) had decreased exports/imports PRIOR (1914) to the crash of 1929
By 1914, most developed countries had adopted the gold standard with a fixed exchange rate between the national currency and gold—and therefore between national currencies. In World War I, European nations went off the gold standard to print money, and the resulting price inflation drove large amounts of the world’s gold to banks in the United States. The United States remained on the gold standard without altering the gold value of the dollar. Investors and others who held gold sent their gold to the United States, where gold maintained its value as a safe and sound investment. At the end of World War I, a few countries, most notably the United States, continued on the gold standard while others temporarily adopted floating exchange rates. The world’s international finance center had shifted from London to New York City, and the British were anxious to regain their old status. Some countries pledged to return to the gold standard with devalued currencies, while others followed the British lead and aimed to return to gold at prewar exchange rates.
This was not possible, however. Too much money had been created during the war to allow a return to the gold standard without either large currency devaluations or price deflations. In addition, the U.S. gold stock had doubled to about 40 percent of the world’s monetary gold. There simply was not enough monetary gold in the rest of the world to support the countries’ currencies at the existing exchange rates. As a result, the leading nations established a gold exchange system whereby the governments of the United States and Great Britain would be willing, at all times, to redeem the dollar and the pound for gold, and other countries would hold much of their international reserves in British pounds or U.S. dollars.
The demand for gold increased as countries returned to the gold standard. Because the franc was undervalued when France returned to the gold standard in June 1928, France began to receive gold inflows. The undervalued franc made French exports less expensive in foreign countries’ currencies and made foreign imports into France more expensive in francs. As French exports rose and French imports fell, their international accounts were balanced by gold shipped to France. France’s government, contrary to the tenets of the gold standard, did not use these inflows to expand its money supply. In 1928, the Federal Reserve System raised its discount rate—that is, the rate it charged on loans to member banks—in order to raise interest rates in the United States, which would stem the outflow of American gold and dampen the booming stock market. As a result, the United States began to receive shipments of gold. By 1929, as countries around the world lost gold to France and the United States, these countries’ governments initiated deflationary policies to stem their gold outflows and remain on the gold standard. These deflationary policies were designed to restrict economic activity and reduce price levels, and that is exactly what they did. Thus began the worldwide Great Depression.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GreatDepression.htmlUsing Freedman's Trickle down theories are what has DIRECTLY caused the current economic decline the world is experiencing. Addiditionally prior to the crash of 1929, new developements in Manufacturing Technology and Agriculture led to Over-production in the USA and the South America. A lack of oversight in the Securities Exchange allowed manufacturing facilities to stock pile their over production and place it on their books as "Assets"
Now we have American manufacturing inhibited by China's ability to manipulate and control the price and flow of raw materials to the American manufacturing sector. The addition of a Manufacturing Czar is to "Head Off" the impending demize of the World's High Tech Manufacturing China is currently threatening
World faces hi-tech crunch as China eyes ban on rare metal exports
Beijing is drawing up plans to prohibit or restrict exports of rare earth metals that are produced only in China and play a vital role in cutting edge technology, from hybrid cars and catalytic converters, to superconductors, and precision-guided weapons.
A draft report by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has called for a total ban on foreign shipments of terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, and lutetium. Other metals such as neodymium, europium, cerium, and lanthanum will be restricted to a combined export quota of 35,000 tonnes a year, far below global needs.
China mines over 95pc of the world’s rare earth minerals, mostly in Inner Mongolia. The move to hoard reserves is the clearest sign to date that the global struggle for diminishing resources is shifting into a new phase. Countries may find it hard to obtain key materials at any price.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/6082464/World-faces-hi-tech-crunch-as-China-eyes-ban-on-rare-metal-exports.html
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