United States Economy Overview 1

United States Economy Overview Part 1

Northern America

Peculiar historical and geographical conditions, perhaps unrepeatable on a world scale, are the basis of the economic structure of the USA, the greatest power in the Western world. There were two decisive factors: the full availability of an extensive space rich in natural resources, the intense exploitation of which allowed the growing accumulation of capital which was at the basis of all subsequent surges of the US economy; the influx of tens and tens of millions of individuals from all over the world who, animated by an extraordinary pioneering spirit, populated the immense territories, conquering new lands and new resources. These conditions were accompanied by a progressive expansion of the trading market, strong urbanization and a growing improvement in living conditions, which have fueled high consumption rates. The determining factor of this growth process was undoubtedly an intense technological development amplified, especially during the twentieth century, by an exceptional diffusion of the means of communication. United States is a country located in North America according to CONSTRUCTMATERIALS.COM.

The constant technological updating has stimulated the development of the various economic sectors, favoring a growing rationalization of the forms of production and showing the close interconnection between scientific research, technological application and the production phase. As a result of the very high management costs, these factors favored the process of business concentration, which quickly resulted in the affirmation of corporation, large companies operating in various sectors, whose production units have been organized on a global scale and located in different countries, through multinational companies. Not only that, but the extraordinary development of new sectors, such as that of high technology and related professionalism, has ended up constituting, in terms of intensity and diffusion, a more unique than rare case on the international scene. Thanks to these productive, technological and financial interconnections (public and private investments in this technological race were also huge), the United States was the first country in which there was a direct transition from an industrial economy to a ‘ an economy in which the tertiary sector has a clear leadership, to the detriment of traditional sectors which, over the last half century and especially in the last few decades, have been hit by a profound restructuring process.

In its race towards development and economic growth, the American system has encountered, especially during the twentieth century, severe moments of recession, the repercussions of which have been felt on a global scale. The first crisis culminated in what went down in history as Black Tuesday’s Wall Street (October 29, 1929), the most ruinous day in the history of the stock markets, characterized by a collapse of almost 43 points in the price index. The excess of production compared to the purchase possibilities found in the market had been at the origin of a dizzying fall in prices, which had been followed by an uncontrolled sale of numerous shares, against which not even the banks’ containment operations had been able to. The resulting crisis marked the beginning of a new, more controlled way of organizing the economic and social reality of the country, in which the function of the state, especially at the federal level, has gradually become more important. This role, New Deal by FD Roosevelt, was subsequently expressed both through grandiose achievements in the field of territorial planning, and through more incisive interventions for the protection of the environment and through a policy of conservation of national resources. In the following decades, the growing intertwining between the productive and financial interests of the United States and the main industrialized countries of the world and the commercial relations activated on a global scale found a first important attempt at regulation during the Bretton Woods conference. (1944).

The agreements stipulated on that occasion were configured as an almost unique example in history of agreed and shared government of national monetary policies, in order to stabilize exchange rates as much as possible (linked from that moment to the dollar, which has become the largest in the world) and to rebalance the mismatches in international payments (a task assigned to the IMF, set up together with the World Bank in 1945 and operational since 1946). The particular position of the country within the international framework has meant that the economic crisis that exploded in the early 1970s, as a result of the sudden increases in oil prices and the monetary policy choices of the Nixon administration, deeply involved the economy, determining the second moment of recession in American history during the twentieth century, characterized by a decline in employment and an increase in inflation and public deficit, also as a result of the social costs of supporting the burden of unemployment and the war in Viet Nam.

In addition to the elements of crisis, partially induced from the outside, this country from, of US $ 62,605 in 2018, translates, in a country of over 300 million residents, into an absolutely unparalleled production of national wealth, equal to US $ 20,494,050 ml) has in any case retained persistent and unresolved weaknesses of structural order, showing imbalances both on a territorial and social level and somehow ratifying the existence of a type of economy in which the presence of a share of excluded people had to be accepted as an incontrovertible structural fact.

United States Economy Overview 1