Great Depression in the United States/Timelines
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1921-23
- Post-war recession [1].
1923
- Calvin Coolidge becomes President [2].
1924
- Start of 1924-26 "Coolidge Prosperity" [3].
1925
- Florida land boom [4]
1926
1927
- Long Island meeting of central bankers to discuss UK plea to help the £ by raising the US discount rate [5].
1928
- Death of Benjamin Strong, Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York [8]
- Federal Reserve Bank raises its discount rate to 5%
1929 August
- Start of a downturn in economic activity [9]
- Federal Reserve Bank raises discount rate to 6%.
October
- The stock market crash of 1929.
- 24 Black Thursday DJIA falls by 13%
- 28 Black Monday DJIA falls by 12.8%
- 29 Black Tuesday DJIA falls by 11.7%
1930-33
- The "Great Contraction"
- Banking crises
- Three waves of panic create a progressive collapse of the United States banking system, with the failure of nearly half of the banks and heavy. losses by the others.
1930
- Failure of the Bank of United States [10].
- Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act [11][12]
- GNP drops 9.4% from the previous year. The unemployment rate climbs from 3.2 to 8.7%. By the end of the year, 1,350 banks have closed.
.
1931
- Banking crisis, with the failure of over 1800 banks.
1932
- Chicago Banking Panic [13].
- Revenue Act: income tax rates increased and allowances reduced [14].
- Reconstruction Finance Corporation [15] created
- Federal Home Loan Act [16]
- Recorded unemployment reaches 25 percent.
1933
- Trough of depression and start of recovery [17]
- March
- Inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt
- 4-day banking holiday (temporarily closes all U.S. banks using the Emergency Banking Act) 1933[18].
- Reforestation Relief Act.
- April
- Departure from gold standard
- May
- Federal Emergency Relief Act [19].
- Agricultural Adjustment Act.
- Federal Securities Act.
- June
- National Employment System Act.
- National Industrial Recovery Act[20].
- The National Recovery Administration and the Public Works Administration created by the National Recovery Act 1933 [21]
- Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation [22] created
- Approximately 4,000 commercial and 1,700 "Savings and Loans" banks fail.
1934
- Social Security Act: unemployment compensation introduced [23].
- GNP rises 7.7 percent, and unemployment falls to 21.7 percent.
1935
- GNP grows another 8.1 percent, and unemployment falls to 20.1 percent.
1936
1937
- Recession of 1937 [24]: industrial production down 40 percent; unemployment rises by 4 million; stock market drops by 48 percent.
1938
- Start of upturn