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21st Amendment
The Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution repealed the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which had mandated nationwide Prohibition on alcohol on January 16, 1919. -
Inflation
Inflation is the rate at which the general level of prices for goods and services is rising and, consequently, the purchasing power of the currency is falling. Central banks attempt to limit inflation, and avoid deflation in order to keep the economy running smoothy -
Direct Relief
Direct Relief (formally known as Direct Relief International) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with a stated mission to "Improve the health and lives of people affected by proverty or emergency situations by mobilizing and providing esential medical resources needed for their care -
Shantytowns (Hoovervilles)
During the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and lasted approximately a decade, shantytowns appeared across the U.S. as unemployed people were evicted from their homes many people looked to the federal government for assistance -
Deficit Spending
The Great Depression marked a turning point in America's fiscal history. The budget moved from a $734 million surplus in the fiscal year 1929 to a $2.7 billion deficit in the fiscal year 1932. President Herbert Hoover initially regarded deficits as a short-term necessity while the economy underwent correction -
Industrial Overproduction
A main cause of the Great Depression was overproduction. Factories and farms were producing more goods than the people could afford to buy. As a result, prices fell, factories closed and workers were laid off -
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874-October 20, 1964) was an American engineer, businessman and politician who served as the 31st President of the United States from 1929 to 1933 during the Great Depression -
Unemployment Rate
As the above graph indicates the economy descended from essentially full employment in 1929 when the unemployment rate was 3.2 percent into massive unemployment in 1933 when the unemployment rate reached 25 percent. -
Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930s, originating in the United States. -
Black Tuesday
Black Tuesday refers to October 29, 1929, when panicked sellers traded nearly 16 million shares on the New York Stock Echanged (4 times the normal volume at the time) and the Dow Jones Industrail Average fell -12%. Black Tuesday is also often cited as the beginning of the Great Depression -
Buying on Margin
Buying on Margin became so popular that by the late 1920's, "Ninety percent of the purchase price of the stock was being made with borrowed money." Not only that...the U.S. economy had come to depend on that activity. Before the crash, nearly forty cents of every dollar loaned in America was used to buy stocks -
Speculation
This rampant speculation led to erroneously high stock prices. So, when the stock market began to falter in the months before October 29, crash the speculative investors could not make their margin calls -
Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was an American engineer, businessman and politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 during the Great Depression. -
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930's originating in the United States and lasted from October 29, 1929-1939 -
Foreclosure
Farmers faced foreclosure during the Great Depression. Foreclosure is the legal process that banks use to get back some of the money they loaned when a borrower cant repay the loan. during the 30's there were thousands of foreclosures..... In the 1920's many loans were written when land values and crop prices were high. -
Demagogue
A demagogue or rabble-rouser is a leader in a democracy who gains popularity by exploiting prejudice and ignorance among the common people, whipping up passions of the crowd and shutting down reasoned deliberation -
Trickle Down Theory
Trickle down economics is a theory that says benefits for the wealthy trickle down to everyone else. These benefits are usually tax cuts for businesses, high-income earners, capital gains and dividends. It promises they'll use any extra cash from tax cuts to expand business growth -
Deflation
Deflation refers to a condition where prices decline over a period in time. The prevailing view amongst economists is that deflation can be the cause of many problems in an economy. This opinion primarily arose in the aftermath of the Great Depression in the 1930s. -
Business Cycle
From a conceptual perspective, the business cycle is the upward and downward movements of levels of GDP (gross domestic product) and refers to the period of expansions and contractions in the level of economic activities (business fluctuations) around a long-term growth trend -
Dust Bowl
The dust bowl, also known as the "Dirty Thirties", was a period of severe dust storm that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930's severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion (The Aeolian processes) caused the Phenomenon -
Farmers-Debt
During World War 1, farmers worked hard to produce record crops and livestock. When prices fell they tried to produce even more to pay their debts, taxes and living expenses. In the early 30's prices dropped so low that many farmers went bankrupt and lost their farms -
Hawley Smoot Tariff
Smoot–Hawley Tariff or Hawley–Smoot Tariff, was an act implementing protectionist trade policies sponsored by Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis C. Hawley and was signed into law on June 17, 1930. The act raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods. -
Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt -
Bonus Army
Bonus Amry was the name for an assemblage of some 43,000 marchers-17,000 U.S. groups who gathered in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1932 to demand cash-payment redemption of their service certificates -
New Deal
By 1932, one of the bleakest year of the Great Depression, at least one-quarter of the American workforce was unemployed. When President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, he acted swiftly to try and stabilize the economy and provide jobs and relief to those who were suffering. -
Brain Trust
The Brains Trust, a term coined by James Kieran, a New York Times reporter, refers to the group of academic advisers that FDR gathered to assist him during the 1932 presidential campaign. Initially, the term applied to three Columbia University professors: Raymond Moley, Rexford Guy Tugwell, and Adolph A. Berle, Jr. -
Parity
Farming decreased further during the Great Depression, leading to parity-seeking New Deal era legislation, such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 -
Fireside Chats
Fireside chats are the term used to describe a series of 28 evening radio addresses given by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1944 -
Franklin Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945 -
Bank Holiday
When a new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated in March 1933, banks in all 48 states had either closed or had placed restrictions on how much money depositors could withdraw. FDR's first act as president was to declare a national "Bank Holiday"- closing the banks for a three-day cooling off period -
WW2
World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. Which also ended the Great Depression -
22nd Amendment
The 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution sets term limits for the elected President of the United States. Passed by the United States Congress on March 21, 1947, the 22nd Amendment was later ratified by the requisite number of states on the 27th of February in 1951.
