I see no fundamental “differences” between then and now, except perhaps, for the price of gold stocks. I say gold stocks instead of physical gold because the gold price was held at a fixed rate back then (see footnote).

The Main Difference:
If we take a look at the gold stocks back then, and compare them to the US stock market (i.e. the Dow Jones Industrials), we see the following results, from 1928 through 1934:

Dow Jones Ind: down over 66%
Gold Stocks: up over 600%

Source: http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest_08/taylor102508.html

The $64 Question:
So naturally, the $64 question has to be: “why aren’t gold stocks (and gold) shooting to the moon?”
And the simple answer is that, back then, the US Government didn’t have a “gold suppression” policy. Today, the US Government (US Treasury & The FED)realizes that gold is their arch-enemy; thus they are using their agents, JPM and GS, to actively suppress the price of gold, in order to support the US Dollar and the US Treasuries (thereby allowing the US Government to run the US dollar printing presses as fast as they wish!!!)

The Bad News:
The bad news (for the US Government) is that the entire financial system is coming apart for a number of reasons. One of these is because of the US Government’s extensive market manipulations (stock markets, bond markets, commodities markets, gold market, etc.).

Footnote:
FDR, shortly after his inauguration, cheated the American people out of their gold holdings, then declared the possession of gold to be “illegal.” Then a short time later, he devalued the dollar by 40%, by boosting the price of gold, in relation to the dollar. By burglarizing American citizens and the rest of the world, Roosevelt made the Great Depression even Greater.
Source: http://www.strike-the-root.com/columns/Chkoreff/chkoreff1.html

The professors have done interesting work, but the world today is totally different from the world during the Great Depression. Back then, world trade was tiny, with a far larger percentage of the world’s population living in rural areas. Rural subsistence farmers often had little interaction with countries having more developed economies. Today, world trade is an essential part of the economies of nearly all countries. Wishing, as many do here in America, that we could divorce ourselves from the world’s problems, retreat to fortress America, let the foreigners kill each other instead of us, and be self-sufficient, isn’t an option without a drastic reduction in living standards. I suspect that today, both public and private debt levels are higher than during the Depression. Debt will be a major problem as the economy tries to begin growing. I suspect that, after attempting to find ways to repay it, the government will realize that the only solution is to inflate it away. The greater problem will be the coming oil supply shortage. Money is an idea, energy is physics. The coming oil shortage could cause a hyperinflationary economic collapse as recovery occurs.