Causes of the great depression?

http://americanhistory.about.com/od/greatdepressio...

First keep in mind, all recessions end one way or the other. At some point, as economists say, the market clears and growth resumes. In the case of the "great" depression, the cause of it being a greater than ordinary depression was the unprecidented intervention by government, first Hoover, then Roosevelt. There was a similar scale panic in 1921 and although many wanted the government to "do something" Harding resisted. You never hear about it bacause it came, ran its course and was over. The distortions caused by government policies kept the recovery from happening. Much like we see today.

What made it different from recession that we recovered from in a few years was the large scale failure of the financial system, The banks also failed in 1837 which was the First depression in the US and in 2008 , but this time the government bailed them out.

100s of books have been written about this. Do you expect to get an accurate 1 paragraph summary here?