The Great Depression

Whenever we talk about the Great Depression, I am always amazed as to how the ENTIRE world could basically just take a nosedive. Because of the stock market crashing, there was mass unemployment and banks failing. As with most of these disastrous situations, I could not imagine what these people would have gone through. It would be hard to adjust to having to live a completely different lifestyle than the one that you've grown accustomed to. This was a time period when people were getting used to the big city lifestyles and one day, everything they worked for and everything they had was gone. They then had to regress in that some people had to go back to the days of making their own clothes, and growing their own food. I could only imagine what would happen if a great depression were to strike today. These days, almost everyone buys their food and clothes. We have become so reliant on buying what we need and all the technologies we are given that in reality, if all of it were to be taken away, most people would not know how to survive on their own. This is also why it amazes me that people who went through the Great Depression managed to sustain a somewhat comfortable lifestyle (given their poor conditions), when they were given no warning as to what was to come for them.
I also find the recovery interesting. The stock market crashed in 1929 (Black Thursday) and recovery began in 1933. If the whole world experienced this crash, why did it take so long for the world's leaders to begin a recovery? In my mind, I would imagine that the leaders of the world would have got together ASAP after the crash itself to plan out a recovery process in a UN type of meeting. After all, wouldn't everyone be for the improvement and recovery of the world? Then again, this is a world where pride takes over and interferes with logic and where it can't always be "rainbows and butterflies" because of the complexities we all got ourselves into.