Long Depression
Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman, author of "A Monetary History of the United States", on the other hand, blamed this prolonged economic crisis on the imposition of a new gold standard, part of which he referred to by its traditional name, The Crime of 1873. This forced shift into a currency whose supply was limited by nature, unable to expand with demand, caused a series of economic and monetary contractions that plagued the entire period of the Long Depression. Murray Rothbard, in his book "History of Money and Banking of the United States", argues that the long depression was only a misunderstood recession since real wages and production were actually increasing throughout the period. Like Friedman, he attributes falling prices to the resumption of a deflationary gold standard in the U.S. after the Civil War.
American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold
When the Great Depression occurs, Burton Mitchel III is blamed in the Confederacy. In the U.S. which came out of the 1920s with a booming economy and with the Canadian revolt having been crushed in 1925, newly elected President Hosea Blackford takes the heat, with shantytowns and slums being named "Blackfordburghs". Millions lose their jobs, and in Utah, (under military occupation since 1916), a fanatical Mormon sniper guns down Governor-General John J. Pershing. When Japan and the U.S. go to war in 1932 after Japan is caught smuggling weapons to Pacific Canada (the occupied Canadian province of British Columbia) by the U.S.S. "Remembrance", and Japanese bombers attack Los Angeles. In the 1932 presidential election, President Blackford is defeated by Calvin Coolidge and his running mate Herbert Hoover in a landslide. However Coolidge is never able to take office. On January 5, 1933, he dies of a heart attack about a month before he could take office. (In real life, Former President Coolidge died of a heart attack on the same date.) Vice President-Elect Hoover assumes the presidency, practicing Coolidge's campaign policy of government non-intervention in the economy.