The Great Depression Flashcards
What’s the business cycle?
The ups and down periods of business activity. The bad times are called depression
What are causes of the Great Depression?
Overproduction, speculation, shaky banking, and tariffs on international trade
What is overproduction?
Producing more goods than you can sell
What is speculation
Buying socks hoping to get rich. People do this by buying on margin
What is margin?
Buying stocks with a 10% down payment the rest of the purchase was a loaned
Whats shaky baking?
Banks investing in unsound
What did tariffs on international trade do
Discouraged world trade
What are causes of the dust bowl?
Over plowed fields
Severe drought
Winds blew soil away
What are the effects of the dust bowl?
Farmers headed to California
What were farmers that migrated to California from Oklahoma during the dustbowl called?
Okies
What are barrios??
Mexican-American neighborhoods in California
What did the Mexican repatriation act do?
It forced over half a million of Mexican Americans back to Mexico to open up jobs for American farmers
When did the great depression again? And how?
It began on October 29, 1929 when the stock market crashed
What is a bank run?
It happens when people panic and withdraw the money from banks. Banks closed and people lost their money.
What are the effects of the Great depression?
Bank runs
As businesses closed people lost their jobs, homes, and farms
Demand for goods decreased causing more people to lose their jobs.
People began to feel worthless. Super kitchens in churches help to feed the hungry. People were homeless and hungry.
How did President Hoover failed to stop the great depression?
Hoover kept the government away from the economy
He rejected direct payments like unemployment.
He favored rugged individualism and believe direct payments would reduce incentive to work and undermine Americans.
He believed emergency relief should come from private people and charities not the government
What is aggregate demand?
A total demand of goods
What are Hooverville’s?
Shantytowns of the homeless and unemployed.
What did Hoover believe?
He believed once prices drop the low enough, people would begin buying
How did Hoover respond to the great depression?
- Cut taxes
- Increased federal spending
- Bought surplus farm crops new one
- Created the Reconstruction finance Corporation which made emergency cheap ones two banks and businesses
What was the new deal?
FDR’s plan to in the great depression and put people back to work
What did FDR do during his presidency?
- No more of the government not being responsible for the economy
- Fireside chat’s which is FDR talking through the radio
- He had his Eleanor Roosevelt serve eyes and ears when he was in a wheelchair because of polio
- Assigned Frances Perkins to be the first female member of the US cabinet
What’s the banking crisis?
10,000 banks failing
What is bank holiday?
A time when banks were closed and only permitted to re-open if completely sound
