Реферат: Facts Of The Great Depression Essay Research

consumption seems to be markedly down.

?Freight carloads and manufacturing fall.

?Automobile sales decline by a third in the nine months before the crash.

?Construction down $2 billion since 1926.

?Recession begins in August, two months before the stock market crash. During this two

month period, production will decline at an annual rate of 20 percent, wholesale prices at

7.5 percent, and personal income at 5 percent.

?Stock market crash begins October 24. Investors call October 29 “Black Tuesday.”

Losses for the month will total $16 billion, an astronomical sum in those days.

?Congress passes Agricultural Marketing Act to support farmers until they can get back

on their feet.

1930

?By February, the Federal Reserve has cut the prime interest rate from 6 to 4 percent.

Expands the money supply with a major purchase of U.S. securities. However, for the

next year and a half, the Fed will add very little money to the shrinking economy. (At no

time does it actually pull money out of the system.) Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon

announces that the Fed will stand by as the market works itself out: “Liquidate labor,

liquidate stocks, liquidate real estate? values will be adjusted, and enterprising people

will pick up the wreck from less-competent people.”

?The Smoot-Hawley Tariff passes on June 17.

?The first bank panic occurs later this year; a public run on banks results in a wave of

bankruptcies. Bank failures and deposit losses are responsible for the contracting money

supply.

?Supreme Court rules that the monopoly U.S. Steel does not violate anti-trust laws as

long as competition exists, no matter how negligible.

?Democrats gain in Congressional elections, but still do not have a majority.

?The GNP falls 9.4 percent from the year before. The unemployment rate climbs from 3.2

to 8.7 percent.

1931