After months of warning, banks were not willing to extend broker loans to stabilize the decline, due to the Federal Reserve not providing the liquidity to allow them to do so matters escalated, the market became disorderly, and prices began to plummet. The job of the lender of last resort is to step in at exactly these times, but the Fed did not. Without an ultimate source of short-run cash, banks were forced to suspend operation. .
When the Great Depression started to hit worldwide in 1930, it fell on economists to explain it and formulate a cure. The total collapse of the financial intermediation system was indicated by the fact that from the beginning of 1930 to the bank holiday of 1933, there were 9,096 commercial bank suspensions, and in contrast in the near 70 years since there have been a total of just over 2000 bank closings. Most of the economic world was convinced that something as large and unyielding as the Great Depression must have diverse and complicated causes. John Maynard Keynes, however, came up with an explanation of economic slumps that was to many surprisingly simple. One of those believers that his theory was too simple was President Franklin Roosevelt, who dismissed Keynes solution with the words: "Too easy." .
Keynes believed that the cure to end people's money hoarding and lack of confidence was for the central bank to expand the money supply. By putting more bills in people's hands, consumer confidence would return, people would spend, and the circular flow of money would be reestablished. It was that easy, but policymakers of the Federal Reserve Board thought that his theory was too simple.
During the Depression, Keynes believed that the economy at had fallen into a "liquidity trap", which is when people hoard money and refuse to spend no matter how much the government tries to expand the money supply. In these dismal circumstances, Keynes believed that the government should do what individuals were not, namely, spend.