u/IndividualNo5275

I think George Lucas ideas (ISIS-like Stormtroopers, Crime Syndicates expanding, Republic establishing itself, more about the force, Luke rebuilding The Jedi, etc.) work best for a series than Three Films, and using Rebels to continue these ideas would have been the best option. I would have done the following way:

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Political Plot:

Season Five begins after Episode VI (4 ABY) and ends in 6 ABY. As we see The Rebel Alliance declaring itself The Galactic Republic, and this Season would focus on The Provisional Government, the War with the Empire and later The Remnants. The Battle of Jakku is the moment when The Empire divides itself into the Remnants, and instead of signing a Galactic Concordance, even with many people wanting a conditional peace, Mothma chooses unconditional surrender.

The writing of The Republic Constitution is one of the main focus of this Season, as different factions inside The Alliance disagree on the changes needed. At the same time, some of these factions, including former Separatists, begins to think of leaving this New Republic. The situation worsens, when Garm Bel Eblis, which had a feud with Mon Mothma years ago, reveals itself as the leader of The Corellian Five Worlds, and pressures Mothma and The New Republic to appease the Separatists or the Alliance will split in two.

The situation is solved through a deal. The loyalists agree to:

* A Bill of Rights guaranteeing negative rights to Repúblic Citizens (right to bear arms, freedom of speech, property rights, voluntary exchange, due process, etc.).

* Turn The Outer Rim into a Free Trade Zone.

* Demilitarize after the War and reestablish The Judicial Forces pre-Clone Wars, but decentralized instead of staying in Coruscant and with a big budget.

* Establish a new sector system map, with each sector having one vote, to guarantee fair representation.

* Expand and build new Hyperspace Routes across the galaxy, and turn them public assets to avoid Corporate control.

* Instead of focusing all Republic institutions in Coruscant, puts each institution in one planet (Judicial Forces in Raxus, Senate in Coruscant, Chancellor's office in Chandrilla, etc.).

* Each cent gained from taxes needs to be distributed in accord to planets necessity.

* Fight against pirates, slavery, and cartels at any cost.

In exchange for the separatists loyalty. The crisis is solved, and Mothma is elected the first chancellor of The New Republic.

In Season Six, which happens in 8 until 10 ABY, The Republic is making progress. Mothma begin a Amnesty program and Reconciliation efforts towards Imperial workers, integrating them into The New Republic, while at the same time continuing the war with The Remnants, which chooses to create a shadow council (as we see in Mandalorian) to prepare for Thrawn's return. The events of Mandalorian season 1/2 and Ahsoka are adapted here.

Season seven is basically Thrawn's Trilogy adapted.

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Spiritual Plot:

In Season Five, Luke chooses to travel around the galaxy to study the force and unique force organizations, while at the same time searching for lost jedi knowledge that survived Order 66.

By Season Six, Luke build his first temple in Tython, and begin searching for children to train. I choose not to adapt Legends New Jedi Order because it goes against many of Lucas ideas for the Order. The Jedi are Buddhist Monks who loves all equally, forbade attachments, helps people, etc. The only differences is that they are not affiliated with The Republic and are more decentralized, with various temples being build across the Galaxy as the Order grows.

Season Seven is focused on Luke search for The Journal of The Whills, as he brings his students with him in this journey. Here, the Force is explored more, based on u/Writer417 ideas:

The Living Force (Material Plane): This is the Force as it exists in all living beings, ecosystems and the physical galaxy. They are generated and carried by midichlorians, which flows through life, growth and emotion. The Living Force is cyclical, as it originates from the Wellspring and returns there after death.

Mortis: Receives Force essence from the Living Force, and creates a duality between Light and Dark.

The World Between Worlds (Liminal Plane): It connects time and space, as serves as a gateway to the cosmic plane.

The Cosmic Force (Transcendent Plane): Where all Force energy ultimately resides.

The Whills: Microscopic / cellular entities, but capable to appear as ethereal higher forms, they exist within the Cosmic Force, and feed on and regulate Force energy. They also creates pathways to people (The Will of the Force), while letting people choose or not to follow these paths.

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The best way to explain this to you is by using the parallel of Harry/Snape, which is interesting to read, but the circumstances aren't identical.

Hogwarts is Harry's escape, but is not Snape's.

I will explain:

Harry arrives at Hogwarts having spent ten years being told that he is unwanted, abnormal and a burden, then almost immediately, something extraordinary happens: he has Ron, he has Hermione, he has Hagrid, he has McGonagall, he has Dumbledore and he has an entire House that essentially adopts him.

Even before Harry understands what friendship means, Ron is willing to sit with him on the train, share his food, and treat him like another kid, Hermione eventually becomes one of the most important people in his life, the Weasleys effectively become his second family, he's good at Quidditch, he's brave, he's famous, etc. Yes, the other students many times turned against him and treated him horribly, but his reputation always recovered.

Snape gets almost the opposite experience. He arrives at Hogwarts already socially isolated (with the exception of Lily, the only genuine friendship he has), impoverished, badly dressed, insecure and obsessed with the Dark Arts. And instead of finding something similar to Harry, he encounters James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew, who treats him horribly simply for existing, and it's four against one.

There's an entire social hierarchy behind it. James and Sirius are charismatic, popular Gryffindors, they're talented, they're funny, they're good-looking, they're surrounded by friends, etc. Snape is the weird Slytherin kid, and the scene in Order of the Phoenix is important because the Pensieve memory shows us something that goes beyond a private disagreement between James and Snape. Snape is publicly humiliated, his peers watch, people laugh, he is suspended upside down, and when Lily intervenes, Snape is already furious and humiliated enough that he lashes out at her.

This 100% impacted Snape in long term to think "Power belongs to the people who are socially dominant, and the adults aren't going to save you"

Snape doesn't arrive at Hogwarts and simply become “the bad guy.” He arrives at Hogwarts and finds himself in Slytherin, and, during Snape's adolescence, Voldemort's ideology is becoming increasingly powerful. So Snape is experiencing two things at the same time: Gryffindor is the House of James Potter, Sirius Black and the people humiliating him, while Slytherin is the House where he belong.

If you're an isolated, bullied boy who has already been rejected by the people around you, the group that accepts you doesn't need to be morally or psychologically healthy for you to become attached to it. Slytherin gives him a identity, a belonging, peers, a worldview to explain his suffering, etc.

This makes Snape's later behavior much more tragic, because when Snape becomes a teacher, he finally gets what teenage Snape never had: Power. He doesn't use that power to heal himself in some way, instead he uses it to reproduce the power hierarchy in reverse. James had power over Snape, and now Snape has power over James's son.

That's why Harry becomes such an trigger for him, because Harry is a reminder of the woman Snape loved, a reminder of the man he hated, a reminder of his own humiliation, and a child who didnt deserved any of the hatred directed toward him.

Somewhere inside Snape is still that sixteen-year-old boy who watched Gryffindor students receive admiration and applause while he was humiliated.

To be clear, Snape doesn't necessarily have to consciously think “I am going to punish Gryffindor because James bullied me.” trauma (it was not a grudge, like Lupin says, it was 100% trauma) doesn't always work this way. It can simply be "Slytherins are my people. Gryffindors are not." Snape has a tribalistic worldview, he can be compassionate toward people he identifies with while being cruel toward people he associates with his enemies.

I know people like to point out Lily's friendship as a way that Snape could have choose differently, but there is many issues with this. They were in separate houses, and not only different, but rival houses during a War, and Snape was a "abandoned boy" desperate for a place to belong.

Unfortunately, although it was Snape's fault that his friendship with Lily was destroyed, i don't think Lily truly understand Snape's situation. She was thinking that when Snape notices that his classmates are bad people, he would stop, but Snape's life and mentality was too complex to simply putting him in a "Us vs Them" situation. Why would he allies himself with people who treats him like scum and humiliates him?

I don't think Lily was a bad friend, she was a good friend, but there was a communication issue there: Snape didn't understand Lily, and Lily didn't understand Snape.

I'm not trying to justify Snape's actions. He choosed to became a Death Eater, he indirectly caused Lily's death, he bullied children, etc. But if is not justifiable, it is explainable why Snape became the broken git he was in the books.

The Free Trade Zones were created by the Galactic Senate in 124 BBY to jump-start legitimate commerce in the region in the hopes of ending the political isolation, stagnation and crime that had gripped the area since the Ruusan Reformations. Unfortunately, the acts benefited various mega-corporations, like The Trade Federation.

The Free Trade Zones were reformed in 67 BBY after an intense debate on the issue. However, the Trade Federation and several other major commerce corporations opposed this act as it would give startup companies in the Outer and Mid Rim, as well as small planetary business, greater control over trade in the outlying systems.

Later on, on 32 BBY, The Republic Abolished The Free Trade Zones and reimposed Taxation

I want to understand how exactly it was bad to impose Free Trade Zones on Mid and Outer Rim, focused on Raw Materials production. Was letting The Megacorporations gaining from The Trade Zones the problem?

I want a Fic where this happens differently:

1- Dooku leaves The Jedi Order, but did not join The Sith

2- There is no Corporate influence in The CIS

3- Detail The CIS Economy, Government, etc

4- Did not villanize The Jedi, or The Republic

What was their differences on structure, legislature, membership, taxation, military, etc?

In Legends, the Sith were working behind the scenes for 1,000 years to undermine the Republic from inside, fostering corruption. Without Sith influence, would The Republic still decays and ignore The Outer Rims?

https://preview.redd.it/l4o1gkwhlgeh1.jpg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=93b4a67cc3dc81203c552f9a65e2311ecc98c140

Rules:

1- You can only remain in office until 1869, when Grant is due to succeed you.

2- You cannot be a Radical Republican; one of the reasons Lincoln chose Johnson as his Vice President was to gain the support of War Democrats against the Copperheads. You have to be either a War Democrat or a moderate Republican like Lincoln.

In my case, i would be a War Democrat, maybe from Kentucky, and i would agree on abolishing slavery, give some rights to Freedmen, etc.

Here´s my Reconstruction Plan:

1- A Proclamation of mine is made with establishes the following principles of Reconstruction:

• Slavery is dead and cannot be revived in any form (as Sharecropping).
• Black civil rights and Black voting rights are federal commitments, not optional state concessions.
• States may be restored only if they accept emancipation, Black rights, and a substantially broader loyalist base than Lincoln’s original 10 percent idea. The new standard is a 25 percent loyalty threshold.

2- Freedmen’s Bureau is extended indefinitely instead of letting it wither, by enlarging his budget, and giving broader authority over labor contracts, family reunification, schools, and local disputes. The idea is to turning Freedmen autossuficient.

3- Instead of confiscating land as a punishment for treason, i would design a two-track land settlement:

• Freedmen are settled on abandoned federal lands, swamp and marsh reclamation tracts, public domain parcels, unused federal acreage, and lands obtained through tax delinquency or legal forfeiture where the government can make a clean title case. These are distributed in small family farms, usually 40 to 80 acres, with title, seed and tools, low-interest credit, and a short tax holiday being given to them with help of Freedmen Bureau.
• The large plantations of the old elite are not simply seized and handed to freedmen. Instead, a compensated land-purchase and subdivision program is established. Under this program, very large estates are assessed, the owners receive long-term federal or state bonds, and the estates are broken into manageable farm units, which would make poor white tenants, veterans, and landless laborers be able to buy them on favorable terms.

The result is that the South is no longer dominated by one giant planter class. Instead, it starts drifting toward a two-peasant-class structure

4- A stronger Civil Rights Act of 1866 or a similar bill would be signed.

5- Federal marshals and troops may intervene against intimidation, fraud, and political violence, with harsh penalties being imposed.

6- Instead of 20.000 troops as happened in real life, here at least 60 to 100.000 troops would stay in the South to guarantee Black´s rights.

7- A broad program of internal improvements would be made to reduce racial tensions and increase control of rural areas, with major federal infrastructure projects, including roads, railroads, and bridges. Federal soldiers will be assigned to protect these projects and to suppress attacks by insurgent groups.

8- Morrill Land-Grant Act would be extended into the South to help fund Black Schools and the Homestead Act would be broadened to help freedpeople and poor whites seek land in the West. But only separate colleges for Black students, not mixed ones.

9- Former Confederates get universal pardon and property protection, except for a small number of atrocity cases, and there would be no draconian military occupation of the South beyond what is needed to stop violence and protect elections.

10- 14th and 15th Amendments would still happen, but later.

11- As a Bourbon Democrat myself, i would propose a Hard Money Monetary Plan. The reform program had several parts.

• First, the Independent Treasury would be turned into a strict neutrality rule for public finance. Treasury funds were held only in specie or fully redeemed coin equivalents. Bank paper was not treated as preferred public money, and the Treasury would not support selected banks or favor one class of financial institutions over another.
• Second, legal-tender favoritism would be sharply reduced. The idea is to limit coercive rules that forced the public to accept one kind of money over another and to weaken monopoly protection for any single currency type.
• Third, move to abolish fixed mint ratios between gold and silver. Instead of having Congress determine the relative value of the metals, the exchange rate would float in the market. This is intended to reduce distortions.
• Fourth, the most radical part of the program is the legalization of private coinage and competing assay institutions. Private mints, coin certification firms, and metal-money producers would be allowed to operate under market conditions, provided that their products met standards of weight and fineness.
• Fifth and last, i would also opened banking to real competition, allowing freer entry, freer branching, and freer circulation of bank liabilities. Usury ceilings and other lending restrictions would be repealed or liberalized.

12- A Compromise Tariff would be proposed. Under this tariff, everything essential to rebuilding Southern agriculture receive either zero tariffs or very low duties, consumer goods receive moderate reductions to reduce cost of living, raw materials should flow freely, several industries receive increases to appease Republicans, luxury imports gains increases to offset revenue losses, food tariffs are nearly abolished and manufacturers also receive cheaper inputs.

13- A bunch of Constitutional reforms proposals would also be made based on Confederate Constitution as a way of reconciliation:

• Change the General Welfare Clause from: “to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States” to “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, for revenue necessary to pay thedebts, provide for the common defense, and carry on the Government of the United States”.
• The President gets a line-item veto.
• Appropriations would need a two-thirds vote instead of a simple majority.
• All appropriations must specify exact amounts and purposes.
• Ban extra compensation after contracts or service.
• Eliminate omnibus spending bills through a single-subject rule.

I doubt many of these proposals would be approved by Congress, but it is worth it to take the risk.

https://preview.redd.it/fnxbrntj1udh1.jpg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fd14ff2f5e204fb6ad0cc590a14ccf85e8791733

Rules:

1- You can only remain in office until 1869, when Grant is due to succeed you.

2- You cannot be a Radical Republican; one of the reasons Lincoln chose Johnson as his Vice President was to gain the support of War Democrats against the Copperheads. You have to be either a War Democrat or a moderate Republican like Lincoln.

In my case, i would be a War Democrat, maybe from Kentucky, and i would agree on abolishing slavery, give some rights to Freedmen, etc.

Here´s my Reconstruction Plan:

1- A Proclamation of mine is made with establishes the following principles of Reconstruction:

• Slavery is dead and cannot be revived in any form (as Sharecropping).
• Black civil rights and Black voting rights are federal commitments, not optional state concessions.
• States may be restored only if they accept emancipation, federal supremacy, Black rights, and a substantially broader loyalist base than Lincoln’s original 10 percent idea. The new standard is a 25 percent loyalty threshold.

2- Freedmen’s Bureau is extended indefinitely instead of letting it wither, by enlarging his budget, and giving broader authority over labor contracts, family reunification, schools, and local disputes. The idea is to turning Freedmen autossuficient.

3- Instead of confiscating land as a punishment for treason, i would design a two-track land settlement:

• Freedmen are settled on abandoned federal lands, swamp and marsh reclamation tracts, public domain parcels, unused federal acreage, and lands obtained through tax delinquency or legal forfeiture where the government can make a clean title case. These are distributed in small family farms, usually 40 to 80 acres, with title, seed and tools, low-interest credit, and a short tax holiday being given to them with help of Freedmen Bureau.
• The large plantations of the old elite are not simply seized and handed to freedmen. Instead, a compensated land-purchase and subdivision program is established. Under this program, very large estates are assessed, the owners receive long-term federal or state bonds, and the estates are broken into manageable farm units, which would make poor white tenants, veterans, and landless laborers be able to buy them on favorable terms.

The result is that the South is no longer dominated by one giant planter class. Instead, it starts drifting toward a two-peasant-class structure

4- A stronger Civil Rights Act of 1866 or a similar bill would be signed.

5- Federal marshals and troops may intervene against intimidation, fraud, and political violence, with harsh penalties being imposed.

6- Instead of 20.000 troops as happened in real life, here at least 60 to 100.000 troops would stay in the South to guarantee Black´s rights.

7- A broad program of internal improvements would be made to reduce racial tensions and increase control of rural areas, with major federal infrastructure projects, including roads, railroads, and bridges. Federal soldiers will be assigned to protect these projects and to suppress attacks by insurgent groups.

8- Morrill Land-Grant Act would be extended into the South to help fund Black Schools and the Homestead Act would be broadened to help freedpeople and poor whites seek land in the West. But only separate colleges for Black students, not mixed ones.

9- Former Confederates get universal pardon and property protection, except for a small number of atrocity cases, and there would be no draconian military occupation of the South beyond what is needed to stop violence and protect elections.

10- 14th and 15th Amendments would still happen, but later.

11- As a Democrat myself, i would propose a Hard Money Monetary Plan. The reform program had several parts.

• First, the Independent Treasury would be turned into a strict neutrality rule for public finance. Treasury funds were held only in specie or fully redeemed coin equivalents. Bank paper was not treated as preferred public money, and the Treasury would not support selected banks or favor one class of financial institutions over another.
• Second, legal-tender favoritism would be sharply reduced. The idea is to limit coercive rules that forced the public to accept one kind of money over another and to weaken monopoly protection for any single currency type.
• Third, move to abolish fixed mint ratios between gold and silver. Instead of having Congress determine the relative value of the metals, the exchange rate would float in the market. This is intended to reduce distortions.
• Fourth, the most radical part of the program is the legalization of private coinage and competing assay institutions. Private mints, coin certification firms, and metal-money producers would be allowed to operate under market conditions, provided that their products met standards of weight and fineness.
• Fifth and last, i would also opened banking to real competition, allowing freer entry, freer branching, and freer circulation of bank liabilities. Usury ceilings and other lending restrictions would be repealed or liberalized.

12- A Compromise Tariff would be proposed. Under this tariff, everything essential to rebuilding Southern agriculture receive either zero tariffs or very low duties, consumer goods receive moderate reductions to reduce cost of living, raw materials should flow freely, several industries receive increases to appease Republicans, luxury imports gains increases to offset revenue losses, food tariffs are nearly abolished and manufacturers also receive cheaper inputs.

13- A bunch of Constitutional reforms proposals would also be made based on Confederate Constitution as a way of reconciliation:

• Change the General Welfare Clause from: “to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States” to “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, for revenue necessary to pay thedebts, provide for the common defense, and carry on the Government of the United States”.
• The President gets a line-item veto.
• Appropriations would need a two-thirds vote instead of a simple majority.
• All appropriations must specify exact amounts and purposes.
• Ban extra compensation after contracts or service.
• Eliminate omnibus spending bills through a single-subject rule.

I doubt many of these proposals would be approved by Congress, but it is worth it to take the risk.

https://preview.redd.it/rvi0q2xz2gdh1.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e3bc118b552598ccb12add352a0d9d400c618c9c

Despite the various reasons why the Great Depression occurred, I firmly believe that this is the main reason:

The Federal Reserve in the 1920s, especially under Benjamin Strong expanded the money supply too rapidly during the 1920s: By introducing artificially low interest rates, excessive borrowing was encouraged, with businesses investing in projects that only looked profitable because credit was cheap ("malinvestment"). These investors borrowed heavily to speculate in stocks, to the level that when the Fed eventually tightened policy in 1928–29, these unsound investments were exposed, leading to the stock market crash.

Benjamin Strong also cooperated with Britain, by working with Montagu Norman, and he also wanted Britain to successfully return to the gold standard. To help Britain, the Fed often maintained lower interest rates than it otherwise might have. This policies were not also restrained to Britain, but also to other European Countries, and instead of using this help to fix their economies, they contributed to the stock bubble, and many of them, as Britain, tried to return to the pre-WW1 Gold Standard levels, which was simply impossible. Britain, for example, returned at its prewar parity, which many economists believe overvalued the pound.

Although there is many causes of the Great Depression, it´s undoubtely to me that the Federal Reserve credit expansion during the 1920s was the main responsible, as it created the Economic Bubble that lead to the 1929 crash.

And this is where Coolidge should have done differently:

1- Instead of treating Benjamin Strong’s easy-credit policy as a clever way to “help” Europe and keep the boom going, he publicly frames inflation as a hidden tax and credit manipulation as a danger to ordinary savers. So from roughly 1924 onward, the Fed does not flood the system with cheap credit to support foreign stabilization and domestic speculation. Interest rates stay higher. That sounds painful at first, but it blocks a lot of bad behavior before it gets huge. Farmers borrow less to expand into overproduction. Construction still grows, but less feverishly. Stock speculation still exists, but margin buying becomes less attractive because the cost of leverage is real. The market can still rise, but it rises on actual earnings and productivity more than on borrowed money.

2- Now Europe. European states are forced to devalue their exchange rates, but they remain nominally on the gold standard. It means they do not pretend they can restore prewar parity forever. They accept that their currencies must find a new, lower, more realistic level relative to gold and relative to the dollar. As a example with Britain, instead of restoring Gold Standard to £1 = $4.86, it is restored to maybe $4.40. Coolidge refuses to make America the lender-of-last-resort for a broken European adjustment process. Instead, Europe is told: if you want gold-standard credibility, fine, but you must do it at a sustainable rate. No magical overvaluation, no endless U.S.-financed rescue credit. The result is less international credit addiction and fewer cross-border distortions.

3- Prohibition. Ending Prohibition early (maybe 1926 or 1927 instead of 1933) means the federal government stops wasting enormous resources on a failed moral crusade. It also restores a legal industry, legal tax revenue, and a lot of normal commercial activity that had been shoved underground. Breweries, distilleries, transport, hospitality, agriculture, and retail all benefit. Even more important, ending Prohibition reduces corruption and removes one major symbol of federal overreach, which would help Coolidge image of minimalism.

4- Tariffs. This is the least plausible element, as Coolidge was a protectionist himself, but still important. If Coolidge actively reverses Tariffs maybe to Underwood levels, the U.S. should have became a much more open trading nation during the 1920s. That reduces retaliation abroad, supports export industries, and prevents the world trading system from becoming so brittle.

Put all of that together and you get a very different 1929.

The stock market may still correct. Corrections are normal. But the crash is less likely to become a civilization-level catastrophe. There is no giant mountain of bad leverage waiting to collapse. Banks are less exposed. Commodity speculation is less extreme. Farms are less overexpanded. Europe is less dependent on artificial U.S. credit. Trade is more open. Alcohol is legal. Tariffs are lower.

So what happens instead of the Great Depression? The most plausible answer is a mild recession in 1929–1930, followed by a relatively quick adjustment. The U.S. might still have a rough 1930 or 1931, but not the catastrophic collapse we saw historically. Hoover is much less likely to become the symbol of failure that he became in our timeline. If Coolidge leaves behind a more stable monetary and trade policy, Hoover inherits a less explosive situation.

Roosevelt may still win someday, as i think social programs would be inevitable, but the situation would be less desperate for big changes like The New Deal

https://preview.redd.it/z07cmekshadh1.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=645f4ff330dfeda79b0ac108c7de1b3fce53942b

Despite the various reasons why the Great Depression occurred, I firmly believe that this is the main reason:

The Federal Reserve in the 1920s, especially under Benjamin Strong expanded the money supply too rapidly during the 1920s: By introducing artificially low interest rates, excessive borrowing was encouraged, with businesses investing in projects that only looked profitable because credit was cheap ("malinvestment"). These investors borrowed heavily to speculate in stocks, to the level that when the Fed eventually tightened policy in 1928–29, these unsound investments were exposed, leading to the stock market crash.

Benjamin Strong also cooperated with Britain, by working with Montagu Norman, and he also wanted Britain to successfully return to the gold standard. To help Britain, the Fed often maintained lower interest rates than it otherwise might have. This policies were not also restrained to Britain, but also to other European Countries, and instead of using this help to fix their economies, they contributed to the stock bubble, and many of them, as Britain, tried to return to the pre-WW1 Gold Standard levels, which was simply impossible. Britain, for example, returned at its prewar parity, which many economists believe overvalued the pound.

Although there is many causes of the Great Depression, it´s undoubtely to me that the Federal Reserve credit expansion during the 1920s was the main responsible, as it created the Economic Bubble that lead to the 1929 crash.

And this is where Coolidge should have done differently:

1- Instead of treating Benjamin Strong’s easy-credit policy as a clever way to “help” Europe and keep the boom going, he publicly frames inflation as a hidden tax and credit manipulation as a danger to ordinary savers. So from roughly 1924 onward, the Fed does not flood the system with cheap credit to support foreign stabilization and domestic speculation. Interest rates stay higher. That sounds painful at first, but it blocks a lot of bad behavior before it gets huge. Farmers borrow less to expand into overproduction. Construction still grows, but less feverishly. Stock speculation still exists, but margin buying becomes less attractive because the cost of leverage is real. The market can still rise, but it rises on actual earnings and productivity more than on borrowed money.

2- Now Europe. European states are forced to devalue their exchange rates, but they remain nominally on the gold standard. It means they do not pretend they can restore prewar parity forever. They accept that their currencies must find a new, lower, more realistic level relative to gold and relative to the dollar. As a example with Britain, instead of restoring Gold Standard to £1 = $4.86, it is restored to maybe $4.40. Coolidge refuses to make America the lender-of-last-resort for a broken European adjustment process. Instead, Europe is told: if you want gold-standard credibility, fine, but you must do it at a sustainable rate. No magical overvaluation, no endless U.S.-financed rescue credit. The result is less international credit addiction and fewer cross-border distortions.

3- Prohibition. Ending Prohibition early (maybe 1926 or 1927 instead of 1933) means the federal government stops wasting enormous resources on a failed moral crusade. It also restores a legal industry, legal tax revenue, and a lot of normal commercial activity that had been shoved underground. Breweries, distilleries, transport, hospitality, agriculture, and retail all benefit. Even more important, ending Prohibition reduces corruption and removes one major symbol of federal overreach, which would help Coolidge image of minimalism.

4- Tariffs. This is the least plausible element, as Coolidge was a protectionist himself, but still important. If Coolidge actively reverses Tariffs maybe to Underwood levels, the U.S. should have became a much more open trading nation during the 1920s. That reduces retaliation abroad, supports export industries, and prevents the world trading system from becoming so brittle.

Put all of that together and you get a very different 1929.

The stock market may still correct. Corrections are normal. But the crash is less likely to become a civilization-level catastrophe. There is no giant mountain of bad leverage waiting to collapse. Banks are less exposed. Commodity speculation is less extreme. Farms are less overexpanded. Europe is less dependent on artificial U.S. credit. Trade is more open. Alcohol is legal. Tariffs are lower.

So what happens instead of the Great Depression? The most plausible answer is a mild recession in 1929–1930, followed by a relatively quick adjustment. The U.S. might still have a rough 1930 or 1931, but not the catastrophic collapse we saw historically. Hoover is much less likely to become the symbol of failure that he became in our timeline. If Coolidge leaves behind a more stable monetary and trade policy, Hoover inherits a less explosive situation.

Roosevelt may still win someday, as i think social programs would be inevitable, but the situation would be less desperate for big changes like The New Deal

https://preview.redd.it/z2kj6qyio2dh1.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3202e90c17775a0404a8fbd4826dd988bcc1cec0

Despite the various reasons why the Great Depression occurred, I firmly believe that these are the main reason:

The Federal Reserve in the 1920s, especially under Benjamin Strong expanded the money supply too rapidly during the 1920s: By introducing artificially low interest rates, excessive borrowing was encouraged, with businesses investing in projects that only looked profitable because credit was cheap ("malinvestment"). These investors borrowed heavily to speculate in stocks, to the level that when the Fed eventually tightened policy in 1928–29, these unsound investments were exposed, leading to the stock market crash.

Benjamin Strong also cooperated with Britain, by working with Montagu Norman, and he also wanted Britain to successfully return to the gold standard. To help Britain, the Fed often maintained lower interest rates than it otherwise might have. This policies were not also restrained to Britain, but also to other European Countries, and instead of using this help to fix their economies, they contributed to the stock bubble, and many of them, as Britain, tried to return to the pre-WW1 Gold Standard levels, which was simply impossible. Britain, for example, returned at its prewar parity, which many economists believe overvalued the pound.

Although there is many causes of the Great Depression, it´s undoubtely to me that the Federal Reserve credit expansion during the 1920s was the main responsible, as it created the Economic Bubble that lead to the 1929 crash.

And this is where Coolidge should have done differently:

1- Instead of treating Benjamin Strong’s easy-credit policy as a clever way to “help” Europe and keep the boom going, he publicly frames inflation as a hidden tax and credit manipulation as a danger to ordinary savers. So from roughly 1924 onward, the Fed does not flood the system with cheap credit to support foreign stabilization and domestic speculation. Interest rates stay higher. That sounds painful at first, but it blocks a lot of bad behavior before it gets huge. Farmers borrow less to expand into overproduction. Construction still grows, but less feverishly. Stock speculation still exists, but margin buying becomes less attractive because the cost of leverage is real. The market can still rise, but it rises on actual earnings and productivity more than on borrowed money.

2- Now Europe. European states are forced to devalue their exchange rates, but they remain nominally on the gold standard. It means they do not pretend they can restore prewar parity forever. They accept that their currencies must find a new, lower, more realistic level relative to gold and relative to the dollar. As a example with Britain, instead of restoring Gold Standard to £1 = $4.86, it is restored to maybe $4.40. Coolidge refuses to make America the lender-of-last-resort for a broken European adjustment process. Instead, Europe is told: if you want gold-standard credibility, fine, but you must do it at a sustainable rate. No magical overvaluation, no endless U.S.-financed rescue credit. The result is less international credit addiction and fewer cross-border distortions.

3- Prohibition. Ending Prohibition early (maybe 1926 or 1927 instead of 1933) means the federal government stops wasting enormous resources on a failed moral crusade. It also restores a legal industry, legal tax revenue, and a lot of normal commercial activity that had been shoved underground. Breweries, distilleries, transport, hospitality, agriculture, and retail all benefit. Even more important, ending Prohibition reduces corruption and removes one major symbol of federal overreach, which would help Coolidge image of minimalism.

4- Tariffs. This is the least plausible element, as Coolidge was a protectionist himself, but still important. If Coolidge actively reverses Tariffs maybe to Underwood levels, the U.S. should have became a much more open trading nation during the 1920s. That reduces retaliation abroad, supports export industries, and prevents the world trading system from becoming so brittle.

Put all of that together and you get a very different 1929.

The stock market may still correct. Corrections are normal. But the crash is less likely to become a civilization-level catastrophe. There is no giant mountain of bad leverage waiting to collapse. Banks are less exposed. Commodity speculation is less extreme. Farms are less overexpanded. Europe is less dependent on artificial U.S. credit. Trade is more open. Alcohol is legal. Tariffs are lower.

So what happens instead of the Great Depression? The most plausible answer is a mild recession in 1929–1930, followed by a relatively quick adjustment. The U.S. might still have a rough 1930 or 1931, but not the catastrophic collapse we saw historically. Hoover is much less likely to become the symbol of failure that he became in our timeline. If Coolidge leaves behind a more stable monetary and trade policy, Hoover inherits a less explosive situation.

Roosevelt may still win someday, as i think social programs would be inevitable, but the situation would be less desperate for big changes like The New Deal