Personal Narrative: Line Outside Of Time Watch Bank

Imagine this. You wake up one morning in the year 1929, in your luxurious, pricey mansion. You then make your way downstairs to eat that nice big breakfast. Then you kiss your family good bye and head off to your fancy job. You come home that evening and suddenly you’re flat broke. Meaning all your money and life’s savings vanished. Unreal right? Well it was real for hundreds of families on October 29, 1929. The day the stock market crashed and when America’s confidence was challenged greatly.

On October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed. Not only did millions of investors lose their money but banks lost all of the money they had invested that their customers had given to them. To make the problem worse is that the people who had remaining money in the banks tried

As banks, churches, and businesses were closed, food became insufficient. Prices of oil barrels were dropping drastically. They went from $1.43 a barrel to a Dime! Around 1930-31 2,294 banks went bust and 28,000 businesses failed. People were not buying anything to save the little money they had for survival. At the end of 1931, the Bank of the United States in New York

During the 1920s Wall Street was representing the decade of expanding economic opportunity for every American. During 1927 some American banks failed due to bad investments and low prices for agricultural products. On Thursday October 1929 American stock market failed and millions of investors are plunged into bankruptcy. Over 12,894,650 shares changed hands, many at fire. About two months after the crash in October, stockholders had lost more than $40 billion dollars. The slump was made worse by the share-buying fever that infected the country in the 1920s. Everyone wanted to make quick fortunes, therefore they bought company shares on margin. Competitive buying of the shares drove share prices high above their actual value. Then, when cautious

After a while, many businesses went bankrupt, leaving business owners with bills that went unpaid. Luckily, after World War I ended, America had become one of the world’s leading creditors. By this time, Americans, with full confidence of being prosperous forever, were increasingly investing in stocks. Unexpectedly, in the days of 29 October 1929 the stock market had crashed. Banks that had invested heavily on stock market and real estate now had lost most of their money. There is only little money left in the country by now; the period of Great Depression had arrived

Once FDR’s Inauguration ceremony concluded, he was faced with the damaging effects of the banking crisis that have plagued the nation’s economy. FDR was only in office for a single day when he “called Congress into a special session” because he wanted to start facing the beast head on starting with the banking crisis. The Emergency Banking Act was proposed, developed and signed in a signal day on March 9, 1933. This newly enacted law was “drawn up under pressure and passed promptly in order to facilitate the reopening of the nation’s banks“(Preston, 585). The Emergency Banking Act stated that there will be “12 Federal Reserve banks” that will be issuing additional currency to people with good assets and the banks that will be reopened will

The sun peeks through my cardboard plywood tent. My burlap pillow scratches against my skin and the frosty breeze penetrates my flimsy blanket. I used to sleep on the softest of silk sheets covered by a thick comforter stuffed with goose feathers. I lived in a sizable house with my wife and worked on Wall Street making some real good money. The Dow sure was kind to me. The market was a bull market. I had so much confidence in that market that I bought a great deal of stocks on margin. I would have sworn on my life that I would earn back the money I borrowed and then some. Clearly, that didn’t happen. On October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday, I lost everything. It seemed as if on that day the whole country sold their stocks. Logically, prices plummeted. My shares became virtually worthless. All of my money was invested in the market, so when the market went down the drain, my money and essentially my life followed. Unable to pay back what I owed, the bank foreclosed on my home. Needing a man that could provide for her, my wife left me for a doctor. In a matter of months, I went from the high man on the totem bowl, to a homeless bum living in a shanty town.

In the 1930’s a whole new nightmare had occured. The Great Depression into play losing all their money. During this economic crisis a lot of things happened, some even tried to solve these predicaments.

During the Great Depression in 1929, there was Fernando Francisco the farmer with his only alluring and style 16 year old daughter Nancy Francisco at their barn. On a Tuesday morning in October 29, 1929, Fernando rocked back and forth, while glimpsing through the newspaper. Something caught his eye, it was this “The stock market has just crashed today, Wall street is in a panic and wiped out millions of investors.” After reading, Fernando went straight to the front of the entrance, and started to make billboards.

Because the government did not protect or insure bank accounts, millions of people lost their savings account.” This meant that even if they were the richer ones, in an instant they

For the tenth week of my internship, I was told to take the Monday off and report to 3rd watch.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Great Depression changed the lives of everyone on a global scale, but the economic and social change in America was incomparable. In 1929, the unemployment rate was at a mere 3.2%, but by 1933 however, a massive 25% of citizens were without jobs. To truly understand the enormity of this decline in the working population, one must first understand the causes of the depression itself. On October 29th, 1929 a crash in the stock market, known today as Black Tuesday, contributed to a drastic decline in the value of stocks and assets of banks. The massive hit that many of these banks took to their assets forced many of them into failure, and they took the savings and fall-back plans of millions of Americans with them. Without the banks, ordinary people had no access to their own savings and many people’s homes were foreclosed upon. Following the loss of the banks, unemployment also skyrocketed since people weren’t able to buy goods without access to what they had thought was their money. If there is no demand for products in a market like the United States’, then there is no demand for the production of those goods, and that very production of consumer goods was the trade that many of those hurt the worst by the Great Depression relied upon.2 This vicious cycle was one that would continue to plague the country until a new problem, the

“’Blackest Day on Wall Street in Many Years. Selling orders Swamp New York Market. Billions quoted. Values Fade’” (Shreve 133). Similar headlines most likely splashed across most newspapers on October 30, 1929, the day after the stock market crashed. From this date, the United States entered the Great Depression, the time period where the economy was at its lowest. Although signs were present, this era came as a shockwave to most citizens because the 1920s were times of extreme economic prosper. People’s lives were completely torn from their roots. They were left without any method to make a living, but used drastic measures to survive. The people became desperate and did whatever they could to buy food on the table. Anita Shreve depicts

October 24, 1929 would soon become a day that would be etched in history as Black Thursday. Although there is no one true cause or event that can take blame for the fall of our nation’s finances, the stock market crashing is indisputably the root of the problem that we now call the Great Depression. Prior to this day, the economy and national profits seemed to be on an endless spiral being pushed to the top. The occurrence and aftermath of World War One contributed to our advancement of a seemingly perfect financial state as a country and as individuals. However, after the crash, businesses began to close, including banks and other financial establishments. This, in turn, left no producers or processors for farmers and ranchers to bargain with,

and the stock and the bank managers (“5 Causes”). In 1933 over two thousand banks went out of