The Roaring Twenties - When the Roar Wasn't Loud Enough

The decade of the 1920s is colloquially known as the Roaring Twenties, when modernity came to the U.S. and the World, ushering in a decade of unbounded growth and new-found optimism. GDP growth was particularly strong, as was employment and investment. However, as counterintuitive as it may sound or appear, the 1920s were also years of stagnation, stagnation that owed to the fact that the new, greater potential was not being fully exploited. In other words, while things were great, they still fell short of the potential that had been created, resulting in a form of "growth stagnation." That is, stagnation in the midst of what was exceptional growth. Bernard C. Beaudreau is Professor of Economics at Universite Laval in Quebec, Canada.