This history tells the relatively unknown story of how the Detroit automobile industry played a major role in the 1933 banking crisis and the subsequent New Deal reforms that drastically changed the financial industry. Spurred by failed decision making and conflicts of interest by automobile industry leaders, Detroit banks experienced a critical emergency, precipitating the federal closure of banks on March 4, 1933, the first in a series of actions by which the federal government acquired power over economics previously held by states and private industrial and financial interests.
This book analyzes in a new way the causes of the current crash by showing how such events derive from real estate bubbles and their interactions with banks and other lenders. Analyzes the current crisis of the real estate crash and explains the recurring cycle which led to it Examines why frequent assessments are crucial to making the property tax an effective method of preventing speculative real estate bubbles Combines theoretical analysis with observed cycles of land speculation to demonstrate the impact on the modern economy
Skillful journalism and meticulous scholarship are combined in the full-bodied portrait of that enigmatic folk hero, Henry Ford, and of the company he built from scratch. Writing with verve and objectivity, David Lewis focuses on the fame, popularity, and influence of America's most unconventional businessman and traces the history of public relations and advertising within Ford Motor Company and the automobile industry.
An “engaging and well-researched study [of] ordinary people who joined together to challenge financial institutions” (Choice). Banks and bankers are hardly the most beloved institutions and people in this country. With its corruptive influence on politics and stranglehold on the American economy, Wall Street is held in high regard by few outside the financial sector. But the pitchforks raised against this behemoth are largely rhetorical: We rarely see riots in the streets or public demands for an equitable and democratic banking system that result in serious national changes. Yet the situation was vastly different a century ago, as Christopher W. Shaw shows. This book upends the conventional thinking that financial policy in the early twentieth century was set primarily by the needs and demands of bankers. Shaw shows that banking and politics were directly shaped by the literal and symbolic investments of the grassroots. This engagement remade financial institutions and the national economy, through populist pressure and the establishment of federal regulatory programs and agencies like the Farm Credit System and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Shaw reveals the surprising groundswell behind seemingly arcane legislation, as well as the power of the people to demand serious political repercussions for the banks that caused the Great Depression. One result of this sustained interest and pressure was legislation and regulation that brought on a long period of relative financial stability, with a reduced frequency of economic booms and busts. Ironically, this stability led to the decline of the very banking politics that brought it about. Giving voice to a broad swath of American figures, including workers, farmers, politicians, and bankers alike, Money, Power, and the People recasts our understanding of what might be possible in balancing the needs of the people with those of their financial institutions.
On March 6, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt, less than forty-eight hours after becoming president, ordered the suspension of all banking facilities in the United States. How the nation had reached such a desperate situation and how it responded to the banking "holiday" are examined in this book, the first full-length study of the crisis. Although the 1920s had witnessed a wave of bank failures, the situation worsened after the 1929 stock market crash, and by the winter of 1932-1933, complete banking collapse threatened much of the nation. President Hoover's stopgap measures proved totally inadequate, the author shows, and by March 4, the day of Roosevelt's inauguration, thirty-four states had declared banking moratoriums. Of special interest in this study is Ms. Kennedy's examination of relations between Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Economic historians have made great progress in unraveling the causes of the Great Depression, but not until Scott Sumner came along has anyone explained the multitude of twists and turns the economy took. In The Midas Paradox: Financial Markets, Government Policy Shocks, and the Great Depression, Sumner offers his magnum opus--the first book to comprehensively explain both monetary and non-monetary causes of that cataclysm. Drawing on financial market data and contemporaneous news stories, Sumner shows that the Great Depression is ultimately a story of incredibly bad policymaking--by central bankers, legislators, and two presidents--especially mistakes related to monetary policy and wage rates. He also shows that macroeconomic thought has long been captive to a false narrative that continues to misguide policymakers in their quixotic quest to promote robust and sustainable economic growth. The Midas Paradox is a landmark treatise that solves mysteries that have long perplexed economic historians, and corrects misconceptions about the true causes, consequences, and cures of macroeconomic instability. Like Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz's A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, it is one of those rare books destined to shape all future research on the subject.
Shows how the politics of banking crises has been transformed by the growing 'great expectations' among middle class voters that governments should protect their wealth.
Go details through institutional analysis how major financial institutions (including banks and insurance companies), industries, and the U.S. government behaved and linked with each other during the Great Depression and interwar period. Drawing on data that has not been widely used since the late thirties – including congressional hearings, financial data, and government reports concerning economic concentration in the Depression era – Go presents a general picture of American finance capital on the eve of World War II. He details the emergence of important new financial‐industrial powers in the 1920s that challenged the Wall Street’s established order on the eve of Great Depression, the response of the Wall Street’s finance capital to the challenge, and its renewed dominance as well as the growing community of interests between finance and industry under the Depression. He also points out the role of Wall Street’s finance capital in financing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1932, the New Deal, and the emerging war economy. With its coverage of primary sources, this book will interest researchers and advanced undergraduate students taking American history, political science, and institutional economics.
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt" (Radio Addresses to the American People Broadcast Between 1933 and 1944) by Franklin D. Roosevelt. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
