Great-Depression

FDR Declares National Bank Holiday, Closing All Banks to Stop Collapse of Financial System

1933-03-06 00:00:00 +0000 UTC | Importance: 9/10

On March 6, 1933, two days after his inauguration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt invokes emergency powers to declare a nationwide “bank holiday,” closing all banks in the United States and suspending all banking transactions. The unprecedented action aims to stop the complete collapse …

Franklin D. Roosevelt banking industry Federal Reserve American depositors banking-crisis new-deal financial-regulation emergency-powers great-depression

MacArthur Uses Tanks and Tear Gas to Violently Suppress Bonus Army of 43,000 Veterans

1932-07-28 00:00:00 +0000 UTC | Importance: 9/10

On July 28, 1932, U.S. Army troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur violently disperse the Bonus Army—43,000 demonstrators including 17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups—who had marched on Washington, D.C. to demand early payment of service bonus …

Douglas MacArthur Herbert Hoover Dwight D. Eisenhower Walter Waters Bonus Army veterans +1 more military-force veterans great-depression civil-liberties state-violence

Senate Banking Committee Launches Investigation into Wall Street Crash

1932-03-02 00:00:00 +0000 UTC | Importance: 8/10

The U.S. Senate passed Senate Resolution 84, authorizing the Committee on Banking and Currency to investigate “practices with respect to the buying and selling and the borrowing and lending” of stocks and securities following the 1929 Wall Street crash. The investigation, chaired …

U.S. Senate Committee on Banking and Currency Senator Peter Norbeck Senator Duncan Fletcher financial-regulation corporate-accountability congressional-oversight great-depression

Banking Crisis Accelerates with 2,300 Bank Failures in 1931 as Hoover Resists Federal Intervention

1931-06-01 00:00:00 +0000 UTC | Importance: 9/10

A second wave of banking panics erupts in June 1931 centered in Chicago, where depositor runs beset networks of banks that had invested in declining real estate assets, resulting in approximately 2,300 bank suspensions during 1931—significantly more than the 1,350 failures in 1930. The crisis …

Herbert Hoover Federal Reserve American bankers depositors financial-crisis banking great-depression deregulation institutional-failure

Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act Enacts Corporate Protectionism Despite Economist Warnings

1930-06-17 00:00:00 +0000 UTC | Importance: 8/10

President Herbert Hoover signs the Tariff Act of 1930, commonly known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act after its congressional sponsors Senator Reed Smoot (R-UT) and Representative Willis C. Hawley (R-OR), raising U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels. Hoover had campaigned in …

Herbert Hoover Reed Smoot Willis C. Hawley U.S. Congress manufacturing lobbyists corporate-resistance trade-policy great-depression lobbying protectionism