Finanza e consumi nel XX secolo: interdipendenza internazionale e crisi economiche tra anni Venti e anni Settanta

Through the case study of the USA, the article pinpoints the linkage between financial crises and the reorganization of falling off real economies, focusing on the economic policies enacted to strike the right balance between productive investments and private consumption. The article compares the Great Slump of 1929 with the recession of the mid-1970s and, through a reappraisal of the cliometric approach to financial repression, it points out that, in either case, capital supply was transnational in scope and magnitude, while the Federal Reserve played a rather different role in reshaping private capital markets during the 1920s and the 1970s.