A brief timeline for the Great Depression. It COULD be worse
By Daniel at 22 December, 2009, 7:01 pm
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1928
• Between May 1928 and September 1929, the average prices of stocks will rise 40 percent. The boom is largely artificial.
1929
• Herbert Hoover becomes President.
• Annual per-capita income is $750. More than half of all Americans are living below a minimum subsistence level.
• 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.
1930
By February, the Federal Reserve has cut the prime interest rate from 6 to 4 percent. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon announces that the Fed will stand by as the market works itself out: ‘Liquidate labor, liquidate real estate… values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wreck from less-competent people’.
The GNP falls 9.4 percent from the year before. The unemployment rate climbs from 3.2 to 8.7 percent.
1931
• No major legislation is passed addressing the Depression.
• The GNP falls another 8.5 percent; unemployment rises to 15.9 percent.
1932
• This and the next year are the worst years of the Great Depression. For 1932, GNP falls a record 13.4 percent; unemployment rises to 23.6 percent.
• Industrial stocks have lost 80 percent of their value since 1930.
• 10,000 banks have failed since 1929, or 40 percent of the 1929 total.
• GNP has also fallen 31 percent since 1929.
• Over 13 million Americans have lost their jobs since 1929.
• International trade has fallen by two-thirds since 1929.
- darkride13
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