Events, Verisoph

c. 1927 The doctrine of odious debt 0 cit. The odious debt doctrine holds that debts run up by a dictator for personal gain, and not for the public, should not bind a successor government. Campaigners invoked it to argue that people should not repay loans that enriched corrupt rulers. economy / politics ●●●

July 1927 Central bankers meet secretly on Long Island 0 cit. Norman, Strong, Schacht, and Charles Rist of France met privately at an estate on Long Island to coordinate policy. Strong agreed to ease US credit to help Britain hold gold, a decision critics later blamed for fueling the Wall Street boom. economy / politics ●●●●

August 1927 Benjamin Strong's easy-money rate cut 0 cit. Following the Long Island meeting, the Federal Reserve cut its discount rate to support the pound and the European gold standard. The move, sometimes called a coup de whisky to the stock market, is often cited as feeding speculation into 1929. economy / politics ●●●

c. 1927 to c. 1928 Gold drains toward Paris and strains London 0 cit. The Banque de France built up large sterling balances and pressed the Bank of England by threatening to convert them into gold. The tug of war over gold reserves exposed how the gold standard set the central banks against one another. economy / politics ●●●

c. 1927 Kenya-Uganda Railway headquarters completed in Nairobi 6 cit. The headquarters building of the Kenya and Uganda Railways was completed in Nairobi in the 1920s, designed by the noted imperial architect Herbert Baker, who was himself a prominent Freemason and designed Masonic buildings elsewhere in the empire, including in South Africa. There is no documented evidence that this particular Nairobi building was designed with Masonic symbolism; the connection cited in popular accounts is Baker's personal Masonic membership and his broader body of imperial architectural work, not a sourced design brief for the building itself. economy / technology ●

21 April 1927 Italy adopts the Charter of Labour 1 cit. The Fascist Grand Council proclaims the Charter of Labour, setting out the doctrine of the corporate state in which state-run corporations were meant to organize employers and workers together. In practice the system subordinated labor to the regime and gave employers the upper hand, and critics saw the corporatist promise as largely propaganda. economy / politics ●●●

1927 Panama passes its anonymous company law 0 cit. In 1927 Panama adopted a corporation law modelled on Delaware's, letting people set up companies with hidden owners and no local business. Together with its open ship registry, this made Panama an early offshore centre. The country became a byword for shell companies over the following decades. economy / politics ●●

1927 American engineers build the Dnieper Dam 0 cit. The Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, the largest in Europe when finished, was built with the American engineer Hugh Cooper as chief consultant and turbines and generators from General Electric and other Western firms. Soviet propaganda hailed it as a socialist triumph. Its core technology came from the West. economy / technology ●●●

c. 1927 Trans-Nzoia settlers turn to maize monoculture 2 cit. By the mid-1920s, after the wartime flax boom collapsed and flax prices could no longer carry settler farms, many Europeans in Trans-Nzoia concentrated on maize. That is what "flax prices failed" means: a crop once pushed as profitable stopped paying well enough, so settlers shifted to bulk grain. Kitale became a highland grain economy dependent on alienated land, resident African labour, transport and producer cooperatives. economy / society ●●●●

c. 1928 to c. 1933 Collectivization and the First Five-Year Plan 0 cit. The state seized private farms into collectives and drove crash industrialization through central planning. Peasant resistance was met with mass deportations of so-called kulaks and severe grain requisitioning. economy / politics / society ●●●●

16 October 1928 Death of Benjamin Strong 0 cit. Benjamin Strong died in office, removing the steadiest hand in American central banking. His death left the Federal Reserve divided and weakened its coordination with Europe just before the crisis. economy / politics ●●●

25 June 1928 France returns to gold with the Poincare franc 0 cit. A monetary law fixed the franc to gold at about one-fifth of its prewar value, locking in France's competitive advantage. France then accumulated one of the world's largest gold hoards, tightening credit for everyone else. economy / politics ●●●

1928 Bernays and the engineering of consent 0 cit. Edward Bernays, in Propaganda, argues that the conscious manipulation of the public mind is a normal and necessary part of democratic society, and builds the public-relations industry to do it. Shaping desire and belief at scale is the media, education, and information pillar's deepest form of power. economy / pillar / society ●●●

6 December 1928 The Banana Massacre in Colombia 0 cit. Thousands of United Fruit workers in Colombia's banana zone strike for written contracts, an eight-hour day, and an end to payment in company scrip. The Colombian army, under pressure from the company and a US threat to intervene, opens fire on a crowd gathered in Ciénaga. The death toll is fiercely contested: the government reported dozens, while other accounts and Gabriel García Márquez's fictional retelling put it in the hundreds or thousands. economy / society ●●●

1928 The Red Line Agreement carves up Middle Eastern oil 0 cit. Western oil companies drew a red line on a map around the former Ottoman lands and agreed not to compete inside it except together, through the Iraq Petroleum Company. British, French, Dutch, and American firms split the region's oil among themselves. Local rulers and peoples had no seat at the table where their resources were divided. diplomacy / economy ●●

31 July 1928 The Red Line Agreement carves up Ottoman oil 0 cit. The major oil companies draw a red line around the former Ottoman Empire and agree to develop oil inside it only jointly, not compete. The pact locked much of Middle Eastern oil into the hands of a small group of Western firms for decades. diplomacy / economy ●●●

c. September 1928 The Achnacarry pact and the Seven Sisters 0 cit. Heads of the biggest oil companies meet secretly at a Scottish castle and agree to freeze their market shares and fix prices worldwide, the 'As-Is' agreement. It set the pattern for the cartel of majors later nicknamed the Seven Sisters. economy / politics ●●

17 September 1928 The oil majors carve up the world at Achnacarry 0 cit. At a secret meeting in a Scottish castle, the heads of Standard Oil of New Jersey, Shell, and Anglo-Persian signed the As-Is Agreement to freeze market shares and stop competing on price. It became the foundation of the cartel later known as the Seven Sisters, which set global oil prices and output for decades. The pact showed a handful of private firms coordinating across borders in ways that shaped the economies of entire nations. diplomacy / economy ●●

1928 Pyrethrum joins the settler cash-crop basket 1 cit. Pyrethrum cultivation was introduced in Kenya in 1928 and became another highland cash crop. Like coffee and tea, it depended on altitude, land control, regulated marketing and state boards. It made the highlands more valuable and tightened the link between agriculture, title, labour and export revenue. economy / politics ●●●

29 October 1929 Wall Street Crash of 1929 0 cit. Share prices on the New York Stock Exchange collapse on Black Tuesday after days of panic selling. The crash helps trigger the Great Depression and a decade of financial retrenchment worldwide. economy ●●●●

1929 Formation of Unilever 0 cit. Britain's Lever Brothers and the Dutch Margarine Unie agree to merge, creating Unilever with dual British and Dutch parents. It becomes one of the world's largest consumer goods companies. economy ●●●

24 October 1929 Wall Street Crash 0 cit. US stock prices collapse in the panic selling of late October 1929. The crash helps trigger the Great Depression, which spreads mass unemployment worldwide and feeds the political extremism of the 1930s. economy ●●●●●

c. November 1929 to c. 1933 Stalin launches forced collectivization 0 cit. Stalin orders the mass collectivization of Soviet agriculture and the liquidation of the kulaks as a class. Millions of peasants are deported or die in the famines that follow. economy / politics ●●●●

24 October 1929 Morgan bankers try to steady the 1929 crash 0 cit. On Black Thursday in October 1929 a group of leading bankers met at the Morgan offices and pooled money to buy shares and calm the market. The effort slowed the fall only briefly before the crash resumed. economy ●●●

7 June 1929 The Young Plan for German reparations 0 cit. A committee chaired by American businessman Owen D. Young produced a plan to reorganize Germany's World War I reparations. The plan proposed a new international bank to handle the payments, which became the Bank for International Settlements. economy / politics ●●●

c. 1929 to c. 1933 Gold-standard orthodoxy deepens the Depression 0 cit. Historians such as Liaquat Ahamed and Adam Tooze argue the central bankers' loyalty to the gold standard forced deflation and choked recovery. The documented cause of the disaster was this policy failure and rigid orthodoxy, not a deliberate plot by bankers to profit from ruin. economy / politics ●●●

1929 Lionel Robbins appointed head of the LSE economics department 0 cit. Lionel Robbins becomes head of the economics department at the London School of Economics. Robbins favored classical liberal, free-market economics and used his position to recruit like-minded economists, setting the stage for the LSE's turn away from its Fabian origins. economy ●●

1929 Ernest Oppenheimer becomes chairman of De Beers 0 cit. After years of buying De Beers shares and negotiating with the company's directors, Ernest Oppenheimer was elected chairman of De Beers Consolidated Mines. The takeover merged Anglo American's diamond interests with De Beers, placing most of the world's diamond production under Oppenheimer family control for the rest of the century. economy ●●●

c. 1 January 1929 Mexican Repatriation 0 cit. During the Great Depression, US federal, state, and local officials pressured or forcibly removed people of Mexican descent from the country through raids, deportation trains, and coerced 'voluntary' departures. Historians Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez, in their study Decade of Betrayal, estimate that between 1 million and 1.8 million people were removed between 1929 and 1936, and that as many as 60 percent of them were US citizens, mostly children. Los Angeles County alone organized deportation trains that sent thousands south, and many families lost homes, jobs, and property with no due process. economy / politics / society ●●●

1929 Lionel Robbins takes the chair of economics 0 cit. Lionel Robbins became professor of economics at the LSE in 1929, at the age of thirty. He built the department into a leading centre of economic theory and gathered around him a strong group of scholars. Robbins favoured free markets and became a key figure in the School's economics wars of the following decade. economy / science ●●

1929 Luxembourg exempts holding companies from tax 0 cit. A 1929 law let holding companies based in Luxembourg pay almost no tax on income from shares and assets held abroad. The rule drew a stream of corporate structures and helped build the country into a major finance hub. Under pressure from the European Union, Luxembourg finally abolished the special regime in 2010. economy / politics ●●

May 1929 Ford helps build the Soviet auto industry at Gorky 0 cit. The Ford Motor Company signed an agreement to help the Soviet Union build a huge automobile plant near Nizhny Novgorod, later Gorky, based on Ford's Model A designs and production methods. American engineers helped set it up and train workers. The GAZ works became the backbone of Soviet car and truck production. economy / technology ●●●

1929 Albert Kahn's firm designs hundreds of Soviet factories 0 cit. The Detroit industrial architect Albert Kahn, who had designed Ford's plants, took a contract to design factories across the Soviet Union during the first Five-Year Plan. His firm set up a design office in Moscow, trained Soviet staff, and produced plans for hundreds of industrial projects. It was one of the clearest single channels of Western industrial technology into Soviet industry. economy / technology ●●●●

1929 Magnitogorsk rises as a copy of an American steel city 0 cit. The giant steel complex at Magnitogorsk was planned with the American firm Arthur G. McKee and modeled closely on the United States Steel works at Gary, Indiana. Foreign engineers and specialists helped raise it from bare steppe. It became the model Soviet industrial city, built on imported design. economy / technology ●●●

1929 Standard Oil and IG Farben share synthetic-fuel patents 1 cit. Standard Oil of New Jersey and IG Farben struck agreements pooling patents and research on synthetic fuel and rubber. The ties continued into the late 1930s and drew sharp scrutiny in the United States during the war, when critics said they had slowed American synthetic-rubber development. The cooperation is documented in the companies' own records and later Senate hearings. economy / technology ●●●

17 May 1930 Founding of the Bank for International Settlements 0 cit. The BIS opens in Basel, created to handle German war reparations under the Young Plan. It survived as the bank for central banks and the oldest international financial institution. diplomacy / economy ●●●

11 December 1930 Collapse of the Bank of United States 0 cit. A private New York bank with an official-sounding name and 400,000 depositors closes its doors, at the time the largest bank failure in American history. The collapse deepens public panic in the early Great Depression. economy ●●●

17 May 1930 Bank for International Settlements founded 0 cit. The Bank for International Settlements was established to handle German war reparations and to foster cooperation among central banks. It remains the main institution for coordination between the world's central banks. economy ●●●●

17 May 1930 The United States stays out officially while private banks join 0 cit. The Federal Reserve did not formally join the BIS because the Hoover administration opposed official involvement in reparations. American participation came instead through private banks led by J.P. Morgan and two large national banks. economy / politics ●●

17 May 1930 Basel base and legal immunities 0 cit. The BIS was based in Basel and given unusual legal protections under a host agreement with Switzerland. Its premises, assets, and archives are largely immune from Swiss jurisdiction, taxation, and search, which later drew both scholarly and conspiracy-minded attention. economy / politics / society ●●●

March 1930 Schacht resigns from the Reichsbank over the Young Plan 0 cit. Hjalmar Schacht quit as Reichsbank President in protest at the terms of the Young Plan reparations settlement. His departure moved him closer to nationalist politics and, in time, to the Nazi movement. economy / politics ●●

c. 1930 to c. 1933 American banking panics begin 0 cit. Waves of bank failures swept the United States from the fall of the Bank of United States in 1930 through 1933. The Federal Reserve largely failed to act as lender of last resort, deepening the collapse of money and credit. economy / society ●●●●

c. 1930 to c. 1933 The economic road from Depression to war 0 cit. The documented causal chain ran from the Depression to mass unemployment, the collapse of the Weimar centre, and the Nazi seizure of power. Scholars trace this to policy failures and gold-standard orthodoxy, not to bankers secretly engineering the World Wars for profit. economy / politics ●●●●

1930 Diamond Corporation formed to manage global diamond sales 0 cit. Oppenheimer created the Diamond Corporation to buy up diamond production from De Beers and outside producers and control the flow of stones to the market during the Depression-era collapse in demand. It became the direct forerunner of the Central Selling Organisation. economy ●●

1930 The Kakamega Gold Rush Breaks the Reserve Pledge 4 cit. When gold was found at Kakamega in the Luhya reserve around 1930, the government rushed to amend the Native Lands Trust Ordinance so prospectors and mining companies could enter land that had been promised to Africans for good. The change stripped the so-called protection of the reserves the moment that land became valuable to Europeans. It exposed the hollowness of colonial guarantees and stands as a plain case of one law for the settler and another for the African. economy / politics ●●

c. 1930 The pastoralists bypassed by schools and development 5 cit. Missionaries and the government concentrated schools, clinics, and cash-crop projects in the farming highlands and around the lake, leaving the pastoralist districts almost untouched. Herders entered independence with the lowest literacy and the fewest services in the country. The gap was less about distance than about a choice to invest where returns for the colony looked highest. economy / society ●●

1930 The 1930 land memorandum to the Colonial Office 0 cit. Kenyatta pressed the KCA petition on Kikuyu land in memoranda and meetings, centered on the loss of land in the White Highlands and the demand for individual title. The core claim was that the Kikuyu had been dispossessed of land that was rightfully theirs. The land question stayed at the heart of his politics for the rest of his life. economy / politics ●●

July 1930 Heads the Negro workers' committee and the Hamburg conference 0 cit. Padmore became head of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, based in the port city of Hamburg. In July 1930 he helped stage its founding International Conference of Negro Workers, drawing delegates from Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. It made him the Comintern's foremost organizer of Black workers worldwide. economy / politics / society ●●●

1930 The Stalingrad Tractor Plant is built in America and shipped east 0 cit. The Stalingrad Tractor Plant, a flagship of the Five-Year Plan, was largely fabricated in the United States, then dismantled and reassembled in the Soviet Union with American engineers on site. It turned out tractors and, in wartime, tanks. The project shows how directly Western industry supplied Soviet heavy manufacturing. economy / technology ●●●

c. 1930 The reserves are kept underdeveloped so they keep supplying labour 0 cit. The western reserves saw little investment in roads, industry, or cash-crop farming for Africans, while the settler highlands got the infrastructure. Historians of Kenya argue this was not neglect alone but a working system: reserves kept poor had to keep sending out men for wages. Underdevelopment and the labour supply reinforced each other. economy / politics ●●●

c. 1930 The Yaaku shift from Cushitic foragers to Maa-speaking pastoralists 2 cit. Between about 1925 and 1936 the Yaaku moved into the orbit of Maa-speaking pastoralists, taking up cattle, Maasai custom, and the Maa language. They came to call themselves Mukogodo Maasai, and Yaakunte was pushed aside within a generation. The change was driven by the prestige and bridewealth economy of their cattle-keeping neighbours. culture / economy / society ●●●

11 May 1931 Collapse of Creditanstalt 0 cit. Austria's largest bank, founded by the Rothschilds in 1855, announces it is insolvent. The failure sets off a chain of banking crises across Central Europe and Germany, spreading the Great Depression to Europe and helping force Britain off the gold standard. economy ●●●●

September 1931 Britain leaves the gold standard 0 cit. Amid the Great Depression Britain abandoned the gold standard, letting the pound float. Many other countries soon followed, marking the collapse of the interwar gold system. economy / politics ●●●●

11 May 1931 Collapse of the Creditanstalt in Austria 0 cit. The failure of Austria's largest bank, the Creditanstalt, set off a chain of financial panics across central Europe. The crisis spread the Depression through Germany and then to Britain. economy / politics ●●●●

20 June 1931 Hoover moratorium on war debts and reparations 0 cit. President Herbert Hoover proposed a one-year pause on reparations and war-debt payments to relieve the deepening crisis. It came too late to stop the run on central European banks. economy / politics ●●

13 July 1931 German banking crisis and the Danatbank failure 0 cit. The collapse of the Danat bank forced Germany to close its banks and impose exchange controls. The crisis pushed unemployment higher and further discredited the Weimar Republic's government. economy / politics ●●●

1931 Friedrich Hayek arrives at the LSE 0 cit. At Lionel Robbins's invitation, the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek moves from Vienna to take up a chair at the London School of Economics. Hayek's arrival made the LSE a rival center to Cambridge for macroeconomic debate and set up his direct intellectual clash with John Maynard Keynes. economy ●●●

c. August 1931 The Hayek-Keynes debates 2 cit. Hayek publishes a critical review of Keynes's Treatise on Money, opening a running exchange between the two economists over the causes of business cycles and the proper role of government spending. Keynes argued that active fiscal policy could smooth recessions, while Hayek held that credit expansion caused the malinvestment that produced them. The dispute became the defining rivalry of twentieth-century macroeconomics and shaped the LSE-Cambridge divide. economy ●●●

1931 Robbins recruits Friedrich Hayek 0 cit. On Robbins's initiative the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek came to the LSE in 1931, first to lecture and then to hold the Tooke Chair. His lectures, published as Prices and Production, set out an Austrian theory of the business cycle. Hayek's arrival gave the School a powerful voice for free markets against the growing influence of state planning. economy / science ●●●

1931 to 1932 Hayek and Keynes clash across London 0 cit. In the pages of the LSE journal Economica, Hayek published a sharp critical review of John Maynard Keynes's Treatise on Money, and Keynes and his Cambridge allies hit back. The exchange became the public face of a wider LSE against Cambridge dispute over how to fight the Great Depression. It set free-market theory against Keynes's case for government action, a divide that still shapes economics. economy / science ●●●

1931 Publishes The Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers 0 cit. Padmore published The Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers, a survey of the conditions of Black workers under colonialism and in the West. The book documented forced labor, low wages, and racial control across Africa and the diaspora. It became a widely read text in anti-colonial circles. economy / politics / society ●●

c. 1931 Ford and General Motors build vehicles inside Germany 2 cit. Ford ran a German subsidiary at Cologne, and General Motors owned Opel, the country's largest carmaker. Through the 1930s their German plants turned out cars and trucks, and after 1939 those factories produced vehicles for the German war effort. The parent firms' degree of control during the war has been argued over, but the production is documented. economy / technology / war ●●●

c. 1931 Gold is found in the North Kavirondo native reserve 4 cit. Prospectors confirm workable gold deposits near Kakamega, inside the North Kavirondo reserve that had just been set aside for the Luhya. Word spread quickly through the colony and beyond. The find sat on land that the 1930 ordinance had supposedly placed off limits to outsiders. economy / environment ●●●

1 June 1931 Kahn formulates the Keynesian multiplier 1 cit. In June 1931 Richard F. Kahn published "The Relation of Home Investment to Unemployment" in The Economic Journal. The article gave the employment-multiplier logic that Keynes and his Cambridge circle would fold into the case for public works and demand management. economy / science ●●●●

1931 Co-operative law starts as a settler instrument 1 cit. Kenya first regulated cooperative societies through the 1931 Cooperative Societies Ordinance. This was not yet a mass African empowerment tool. In practice the early cooperative world belonged mainly to settler agriculture and colonial commerce, with African participation blocked or tightly limited. The point is important: cooperatives entered Kenya as regulated economic machinery inside a racial economy, not as neutral village democracy. economy / politics / society ●●●

1932 Founding of Lego 0 cit. Carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen starts making wooden toys in Billund, Denmark, naming the firm Lego from 'leg godt,' play well. Its interlocking plastic brick, patented in 1958, becomes the world's best known toy. culture / economy ●●

1 June 1932 Discovery of Oil in Bahrain 0 cit. The Bahrain Petroleum Company struck oil at Jebel Dukhan, the first commercial oil find on the Arabian side of the Gulf. The discovery proved the peninsula held oil and spurred exploration in Saudi Arabia. economy / exploration ●●●●

c. February 1932 German mass unemployment reaches its peak 0 cit. German unemployment passed six million as the Depression tore through the economy. The mass joblessness and misery of these years fed support for extremist parties, including the Nazis. economy / society ●●●●

9 July 1932 Reparations effectively ended at Lausanne 0 cit. A conference at Lausanne suspended German reparations in all but name, ending the payments that had strained Europe since 1919. By then the economic damage and political radicalization were already far advanced. economy / politics ●●

c. 1 January 1932 Pecora Commission investigates the 1929 crash 0 cit. The US Senate Committee on Banking and Currency investigated the causes of the 1929 stock market crash and the practices of Wall Street banks, gaining public attention after Ferdinand Pecora became chief counsel in January 1933. The hearings exposed conflicts of interest, manipulative trading and reckless practices by major banks and their executives. The findings built public and political support for the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which created the SEC. economy / politics ●●●

1932 Kreuger the Match King falsifies the books 0 cit. The Swedish financier Ivar Kreuger built a global match empire on a maze of hundreds of companies, hidden accounts, and forged securities that concealed enormous losses. When it unravelled he shot himself in Paris in 1932, and the wreckage of what one review called faked assets and fictitious profits helped spur tougher disclosure and audit rules in the United States. economy / politics ●●

c. 1932 Writing for the Negro Worker and the ITUC-NW 0 cit. Kenyatta contributed to the Negro Worker, the paper of the Comintern-linked International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers that Padmore ran. Some pieces appeared under aliases. It placed the Kikuyu land grievance inside a wider communist argument against empire. economy / politics ●●

1932 Robbins defines the science of economics 0 cit. Lionel Robbins published An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, which defined economics as the study of how people use scarce means to meet competing ends. The book shaped how economics was taught and understood for decades. It was a product of the LSE's confident, theory-first approach in the 1930s. economy / science ●●

c. 1932 Fritz Thyssen bankrolls Hitler and later writes 'I Paid Hitler' 1 cit. The steel magnate Fritz Thyssen was one of the earliest big-business backers of the Nazi Party, giving money and lending his name in the years before 1933. He broke with Hitler over the war and fled Germany. The memoir published under his name, I Paid Hitler, describes that funding; Thyssen later distanced himself from parts of the ghostwritten text, so its details are attributed to him rather than taken as gospel. economy / politics ●●●

1932 The Kakamega gold rush brings European prospectors into the reserve 0 cit. A gold rush drew hundreds of European prospectors and miners into the Kakamega area during 1932 and 1933. Mining camps, a township, and claims spread across land that belonged to Luhya families. The rush was small by world standards but large enough to override the promise that the reserve was protected. economy / society ●●●

1932 The government amends the ordinance to open the goldfields to Europeans 0 cit. When gold was found in the reserve, the colonial government amended the Native Lands Trust Ordinance in 1932 to excise the goldfields and admit European prospectors and miners. The amendment let mining go ahead on land that had been declared inviolable only two years earlier. It showed that the legal protection of native land held only until Europeans wanted what was under it. economy / politics ●●●●

29 May 1933 Founding of Saudi Aramco 0 cit. Saudi Arabia signs an oil concession with Standard Oil of California, which forms the California Arabian Standard Oil Company, later Aramco. Sitting on the world's largest oil reserves, it becomes the most valuable oil company on earth. economy / politics ●●●●

9 March 1933 The New Deal and the Alphabet Agencies 0 cit. In the Hundred Days after Franklin Roosevelt's inauguration, Congress creates a wave of new agencies, including the CCC, TVA, FDIC, and NRA, to fight the Great Depression. The burst of institution building permanently enlarges the federal government's role in the economy. economy / politics / society ●●●●

16 June 1933 Founding of the FDIC 0 cit. The Banking Act of 1933 creates the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to insure bank deposits after thousands of bank failures wiped out savers. Deposit insurance largely ends the classic bank run in America. economy ●●●

4 March 1933 Launch of the New Deal 1 cit. Franklin Roosevelt takes office amid the Depression and drives through a wave of relief, recovery, and regulatory legislation in his first hundred days. The New Deal redefines the state's role in a capitalist economy. economy / politics ●●●●

16 June 1933 Glass-Steagall Act separates commercial and investment banking 1 cit. The Banking Act of 1933, known as Glass-Steagall, split commercial banking from investment banking and created federal deposit insurance. It reshaped American finance for the rest of the century. economy / politics ●●●●

5 April 1933 Roosevelt takes the dollar off the domestic gold standard 1 cit. Executive Order 6102 required Americans to turn in most gold coin and bullion to the Federal Reserve. The step ended domestic gold convertibility and let the government manage the dollar's value. economy / politics ●●●

29 May 1933 Saudi Arabia Grants Oil Concession to SOCAL 0 cit. Saudi Arabia awarded an oil exploration concession to the Standard Oil Company of California. The concession created the entity that would become Aramco. economy ●●●●

c. 1933 Rockefeller Center opens in Manhattan 0 cit. The Rockefeller Center complex, financed by John D. Rockefeller Jr, began opening its buildings in 1933 during the Great Depression. The full development was completed later in the decade. culture / economy ●●●

1933 Gustav Krupp backs Hitler and German rearmament 1 cit. After Adolf Hitler took power in 1933 Gustav Krupp supported the regime and the firm profited from large-scale rearmament. Krupp became a pillar of the Nazi war economy. economy / politics / war ●●●●

19 April 1933 Roosevelt takes the United States off gold 1 cit. President Franklin Roosevelt suspended gold convertibility and later devalued the dollar to fight deflation. Freeing monetary policy from gold helped the American economy begin to recover. economy / politics ●●●●

30 January 1933 Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany 0 cit. Adolf Hitler became Chancellor after the Depression shattered the Weimar Republic's centre parties and left millions jobless. The documented path ran from economic collapse to political extremism, the outcome of failed policy rather than any banker conspiracy. economy / politics ●●●●●

17 March 1933 Schacht returns to lead the Reichsbank under Hitler 0 cit. Hjalmar Schacht was reappointed President of the Reichsbank soon after Hitler took power. He put his financial skill to work funding the new regime's economic and military plans. economy / politics ●●●

27 May 1933 Century of Progress International Exposition 0 cit. Held during the Great Depression, this fair marked Chicago's centennial and emphasized scientific and technological progress as a message of optimism, with exhibits on new consumer technology, aviation, and industrial design. It ran for two seasons due to strong public demand despite the economic downturn. economy / science ●●

c. 4 October 1933 San Joaquin Valley Cotton Strike 0 cit. About 18,000 cotton pickers, most of them Mexican and Mexican American, walked off the fields across California's San Joaquin Valley demanding higher piece rates, organized by the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union. Growers and local vigilantes responded with armed attacks on strikers and their camps; at least three strikers were killed during the month-long strike before growers agreed to a partial wage increase. economy / society ●●

5 December 1933 Prohibition repealed, enforcement bureau dissolved 0 cit. Ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment ended national Prohibition and, with it, the rationale for the Bureau of Prohibition, which was dissolved the following year. Its residual alcohol-tax functions passed to a Treasury unit that evolved into the Alcohol Tax Unit, the direct institutional ancestor of the later Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. economy / politics ●●

1933 Zemurray seizes control of United Fruit 0 cit. After selling his Cuyamel company to United Fruit, Sam Zemurray watches his stock lose value as the firm stumbles in the Depression. He storms a board meeting, reportedly declaring the directors were ruining the business, and takes over as the company's driving force. Under him United Fruit deepened its political meddling in Central America. economy ●●

1933 American oil wins the Saudi concession 0 cit. Standard Oil of California secured the concession to explore Saudi Arabia's oil, and struck commercial quantities in 1938. The venture grew into the Arabian American Oil Company, or Aramco, jointly owned by American firms. For its early decades Aramco set output and prices and kept most of the profit, with the Saudi state receiving royalties on terms the company controlled. diplomacy / economy ●●

29 May 1933 Standard Oil of California wins the Saudi concession 0 cit. The new kingdom of Saudi Arabia grants an American company the right to explore its eastern desert for oil, a venture that became Aramco. The deal tied the United States to Saudi oil and marked American entry into a region Britain had dominated. diplomacy / economy ●●●

20 February 1933 German industrialists back Hitler at a private meeting 1 cit. Three weeks after Hitler became chancellor, some two dozen leading German industrialists met privately with him and Hermann Goering. Hitler promised to crush the labor movement and rebuild the military, and the businessmen pledged large sums for the coming election. The meeting, arranged with Hjalmar Schacht, tied big German business to the new regime. economy / politics ●●●●

1933 German business pays into the Adolf Hitler Endowment 1 cit. After Hitler took power, major companies paid regular contributions into a fund known as the Adolf Hitler Endowment of German Industry. It channeled business money to the Nazi leadership on an ongoing basis. The arrangement bound German industry to the regime and bought a measure of quiet cooperation. economy / politics ●●

c. 1933 IBM's German subsidiary supplies punch-card machines 1 cit. IBM's German subsidiary Dehomag leased and serviced Hollerith punch-card tabulating machines used in German censuses and record-keeping. In his book IBM and the Holocaust, Edwin Black argues this data technology helped the regime identify and track victims. Black's charge of knowing complicity is his interpretation; the machines and the business relationship are documented. economy / technology ●●●

c. 1933 Luhya families are displaced and given token compensation 4 cit. Luhya families whose land fell inside the mining area were moved aside so prospecting and mining could go ahead. Compensation was small and set by the administration, not by the people who lost the use of their land. The reserve had been redrawn around European interests, and its residents had little say in the outcome. economy / society ●●●

c. 1933 Kalecki sketches a demand-led theory of output 1 cit. Michal Kalecki developed an independent demand-led macroeconomics in the early 1930s, before The General Theory appeared in English. His work is a useful warning against treating Keynesian economics as one man inventing the whole field from nothing; similar problems were pushing several economists toward aggregate-demand explanations. economy / science ●●●

6 June 1934 Founding of the SEC 0 cit. The Securities Exchange Act creates the Securities and Exchange Commission to police stock markets after the 1929 crash, with Joseph P. Kennedy as its first chairman. Mandatory disclosure and fraud enforcement become the rules of American finance. economy ●●●