Posted on 12/12/2019 1:46:07 PM PST by Perseverando
October 29, 1929, the New York Stock Exchange crashed.
Panic ensued as Wall Street sold 16,410,030 shares in a single day.
Billions of dollars were lost and America plunged into the Great Depression.
An estimated 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half of all banks failed.
Ending the "Roaring Twenties," the Great Depression began with a rapid contraction of credit.
This occurred despite the existence of the Federal Reserve which was created with promises that it would prevent financial panics.
Democrat Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan had stated (Hearst's Magazine, Nov 1923):
"The Federal Reserve Bank that should have been the farmer's greatest protection has become his greatest foe."
The President at the start of the Great Depression was Herbert Hoover, who had only been in office seven months.
Herbert Hoover had previously coordinated the feeding of millions who were starving in Europe and Russia after World War I.
When the Mississippi River flooded in 1927, Herbert Hoover orchestrated the relief of over 630,000 people who were affected, 200,000 of which were African American.
During the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover led a drive to mobilize private relief agencies, October 18, 1931:
"Time and again the American people have demonstrated a spiritual quality of generosity ...
This is the occasion when we must arouse that idealism, that spirit, from which there can be no failure in this primary obligation of every man to his neighbor ..."
Hoover continued:
"Our country and the world are today involved in more than a financial crisis ...
This great complex, which we call American life, is builded and can alone survive upon the translation into individual action of that fundamental philosophy announced by the Savior
(Excerpt) Read more at myemail.constantcontact.com ...
The depression really didn’t get going until the major bank failures in 1930. Roosevelt started Making Depressions Great Again after taking office in 1933.
The hard times were reflected in popular songs. These were some of the top hits at the time.
Landlord's mad and getting madder,
Ain't we got fun?
Times are bad and getting badder,
Still we have fun.
There's nothing surer,
The rich get rich and the poor get laid off...
I've spent my salary, and the income tax is going to break us.
When the snow falls, we'll eat snowballs.
Ain't we got fun!
--From Ain't We Got Fun?
Democrat Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan had stated (Hearst’s Magazine, Nov 1923):
“The Federal Reserve Bank that should have been the farmer’s greatest protection has become his greatest foe.”
There were a bunch of mistakes that led to the Great Depression. In no particular order:
The use of margin purchases in the stock market. This has more recently been duplicated these days with sub prime housing mortgages. People with a dime could buy a dollar of stock, as long as they promised to eventually pay the other 90 cents. Gambling.
The physical market was horribly price deflated. Prices were low because there was no money to buy things.
Hoover tried to fix things from the top down. This doesn’t work when people on the bottom are starving, and can’t wait.
Even with the Dust Bowl wiping out thousands of farms, there was still far too much food for people and animals, so the bottom dropped out of the already low price for food.
There was no international buffer because of the international depression.
Let’s see: A major market crash after the GOP wins total control of the house + Wh. I say wipe the slate clean b4 the rats know what hit them. Get rid of all/most of government. Better yet we have 70 senators with Hillary in the WH. Slap her around.
This occurred despite the existence of the Federal Reserve which was created with promises that it would prevent financial panics.
Actually, the FED kept track of the money supply without taking into account the impact of the newly popular checking accounts, and thus inflated the actual money supply. When they discovered the mistake, they secretly began to buy the Federal Reserve Bonds needed for banks to make loans, thus reducing the money supply, even though gold was arriving from Europe (the gold standard required countries receiving gold to reduce their interest rates). This caused the depression in Europe (less gold, less money supply in Europe), eventually bit enough to collapse our stock market, and caused rural banks to not make loans to farmers to plant their crops; this in turn led to foreclosures of farms. The Fed continued to reduce the money supply throughout the Roosevelt’s New Deal, which tried to increase economic activity while the Fed was reducing economic activity.
Proof of the above lies in the “Monetary History of the United States, 1913 - 1939”
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