How Great was the Great Depression?

Some say that one of the biggest influences of the great depression was the government's activity in the economy.  A federal reserve board was set up, with the hope that they would be able to prevent depressions.  There have been many depressions before this one they just were not as severe.  The great depression came at a time when the government was most involved in the Nations economy, does this seem like a coincidence?  I think that the government played a very large part in the great depression.  The stock market crashing was the most memorable part of the depression, causing an unprecedented amount of runs on banks.  The crash of the stock market also led to over 11,000 of the nations banks failing.  There were effects that were shown for years after the great depression.  There are some small scale effects, and some that influenced the whole nation.  During the depression there were very few jobs, and food prices sky-rocketed.  These are effects of the depression, but so are the things we see now.  The  Great Depression began 82 years ago, but we still live with the fact that it impacted our lives.  We are still seeing some of the effects today.  With the steady increase in jobs, money started to become more available and we finally "got back onto our feet."  Everyone says that we have completely caught up to where we were before the depression.  We have made significant progress, but if this is true why are prices still rising?  I know that there is influence with the world's economy but how much does that influence our economy?  We are still seeing prolonged effects of the great depression and will see them for a very long time.


http://www.thegreatdepressioncauses.com/
http://www.amatecon.com/gd/gdcandc.html
http://www.dirbull.com/articles/the-great-depression--causes-and-effects-38.htm