Opinion of Calvin Coolidge

[Storebought]

Granting US citizenship to American Indians was his only life achievement.

[Storebought]

HP, a large share of the blame for the Great Depression lays on his shoulders!

You're thinking of Hoover.

FF.

Hoover just inherited the mess Coolidge left for him and took the blame

What? The Great Depression began under Hoover's administration.

So? Just because it began under Hoover doesn't mean he should get 100% of the blame, Coolidge's economic policy helped the depression to start, did Hoover sign some crap that was pretty f**king terrible and may have continued the Depression's existence? Yes, but his policies didn't start it.

Well, yeah, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 started the Depression. However, it was Hoover's interventionist reaction to what could have been a brief but painful recession (like the previous recession of 1920-21) and caused it to become the worst economic period in American history.

Regardless, I don't see how Coolidge is to blame here.

The economy had been slowing throughout the year 1929 before the crash had started. It is true that the combination of tariffs backfiring, taxes and the failure of the FED to maintain liquidity in the banks caused the Great Depression over the next few years.

But that only means that actions taken in that period caused The Great Depression to be a Depression. In terms of a slowdown in any degree or level, such was already in the cards. The 1920's had been rather rocky and banks not located in the cities and north were already struggling thanks to the crash in farm prices following World War I. Kind of like how Michigan was left out of the 2000's expansion and Texas out of the 1980's. Such is the cost of living tied to a singular industry, especially when it is in turn so dependent on commodity prices.

A correction of some sort was bound to happen, particularly with such loose credit as was the case in the 1920's. To the extent that such planted the seeds of what would become the Depression, falls on Coolidge because he was President at the time. Though unlike Clinton, Coolidge cannot be directly tied to an overt action that planted those seeds in the form of certain pieces of banking legislation passed in the late 1990's. The left is blaming Coolidge for specific inactions, not intervening to help the farmers or redistribute income in general. The problem is that this wouldn't have stopped the contraction from occuring, and as I stated the depth of the correction was fault of letting all the banks fail, as well as the tariffs. 

So, essentially, the Great Depression was Andrew Mellon's fault.