What is a business cycle? What phase did the United States move through in the 1920s?
a period growth and contraction of the economy
-expansion
What event occurred on Black Tuesday?
Stock market crash! investors sold more than 16 million shares of stock
Congress instituted the RFC to loan money to who?why?
Banks!!
so they could lend money to businesses to stimulate the economy
Roosevelt created the Securities Exchange Commission to...
Regulate the stock market
What was one reason why farmers suffered from an early depression?
- bought tractors and equipment they couldn't pay back
- high crop yield with no one to sell to
-several natural disasters destroyed their fields
Which president was blamed for the Great Depression?Why did people think so?
Herbert Hoover, people felt like he was doing nothing to help the people during the crisis
Why did so many banks collapse at the beginning of the Great Depression?
Everyone wants to take their money out. Banks didn't have enough money in the bank.
What is the theory of trickle-down economics?
Theory that financial benefits given to banks and large businesses will trickle down to smaller businesses and consumers
What were the goals of the New Deal?
provide relief, recovery, and reform
What did the Social Security Act do?
Established a pension system for retirees and established unemployment insurance for workers who lost their jobs
Which was the first group to suffer from an early depression in the 1920s?
FARMERS
What were Hoovervilles? Where was the largest Hooverville in the country?
makeshift shantytowns of tents and shacks built on public or vacant lots.
Central Park, NY
Why did the Bonus Army March on Washington D.C?
President Hoover vetoed a bill providing for early payment of bonuses
How did Elanor Roosevelt change the role of the First Lady?
Went from being laregly ceremonial to a role of political involement
Where did most of the migrants from the Dust Bowl move to?
California's central valley
What was the distribution of wealth like leading up to the Great Depression?
UNEVEN!!! Rich were getting way richer while the poor were becoming marginally less poor
factories able to produce a surplus of product with no one but the top 1% to buy things
What contributed to the plight of farmers during the Great Depression?
Falling prices for crops and livestock
Why did people believe the nation needed new leadership in 1932
President Hoover's volunteerism/trickle down economic policies FAILED
The Agricultural Adjustment Act helped farmers because it...
sought to end overproduction and raise crop prices
What is a sit-down strike?
when workers refuse to leave a work place until their demands are met.
What was the Hawley-Smoot Tariff? How did it cause problems globally?
raised taxes on foreign imports to the point where foreign imports could not compete with US market.
High tariffs closed markets leaving an even greater amount of unsold products closed off US to other countries and other countries to the US DAMAGED INTERNATIONAL TRADE
What was the Dust Bowl? Give me one reason for why it happened?
Severe dust storms temporarily choked and blinded people, killing animals, fish, and plant life.
- intensive farming on grassland in the Great Plains
-reduced area for animals to graze resulting in overgrazing
-farming overworking the soil making it vulnerable to wind erosion
What did Roosevelt and Congress pass the day after FDR's inauguration?
Emergency Banking Bill
Who was the British economist who argued that deficit spending was needed to end the Depression?
John Maynard Keynes
What was the Congress of Industrial Organization?
A labor union in the 1930s that was considered more ethnically diverse than the AFL.