I like how this documentary started from a very early point of history and uses the course of time to explain the growth and evolution of economics locally and globally. The beginning saw a lot of growth with the advancement in technologies of communication and transportation. This took the economy to a global scale for the first time. This hard work and advancement was torn apart by WWI where countries took sides and although there was a winner and a loser, world powers were devastated and a new economic system emerged from the rubble. Communism sought to do away with capitalism and brought about a new way of thinking based on a classless social order centered around production. Vladimir Lenin said that this system was based on the "Commanding Heights" of the economy, which was the major industries. Communism was an interesting take on how to operate an economy in the post WWI world but ultimately it did not work out for the countries using it at the time.
I thought an interesting note in this video was the part about hyper inflation in Germany and Austria following the devastation of the war. These countries were forced to pay serious reparations for their involvement in WWI. Because they had to pay these reparations, they printed more money and the result was hyper inflation. This greatly drove down the value of their money and greatly increased the price level. It was ridiculous to hear them say that every day items cost millions and billions of Marks. Since inflation is something we talk about pretty frequently these days, that was really interesting and eye catching to me because that level of inflation is about as extreme as it gets.
A topic that has always been interesting to me has been the time period and the cause of the Great Depression. During the 20s Europe was suffering, but Americans were spending like crazy and treating themselves to lavish items and buying a lot of stock. All of the buying created a bubble and when the bubble burst the crash was unstoppable. The value in everything was gone and people lost their jobs and all of their money, which prevented them from spending or earning money. Unemployment was huge and the government could not do anything to remedy the situation until FDR took over as president and implemented several radical new policies to get people working and earning again. John Maynard Keynes was given a lot of credit for creating a lot of the economic statistics and systems that we use today and for analyzing the crash to educate governments on how to avoid it in the future
It wasn't until WWII came along that the economy jump started again. The need for massive amounts of supplies got the economy going again and got people working, earning and spending again. I think it is funny that a problem that started in the aftermath of a huge war, was solved by the out break of a second great war. It is a part of economics that I will always find interesting because of the way it was able to correct itself.
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