The Financial and Banking Crisis

The Banking Crisis.

In the banking and fiscal crisis of the Great Depression, the heady days of the 1920s were well-nigh forgotten. More than five thousand banks closed in the three years before President Roosevelt took office in March 1933. By then about nine million people had lost their savings and it was clear that some action was necessary. In the "interregnum," Hoover's final days as a "lame-duck" president between Roosevelt's election in November 1932 and his inauguration the following March, state after state declared banking "holidays," briefly closing local banks in efforts to prevent nervous depositors from creating bank failures by rushing to withdraw their savings from banks believed to be financially unstable. The day after his inauguration, President Roosevelt called Congress into special session and announced a four-day nationwide banking holiday. While the banks were closed, the president introduced the Emergency...

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