Top Highlights

• Domestically it first appeared in late 1929, eight months after my inauguration, and continued in the United States not only during my term but for eight years more, until the start of the Second World War in 1941.
• the “Great Depression” did not start in the United States.
• To be sure, we were due for some economic readjustment as a result of the orgy of stock speculation in 1928–1929.
• This orgy was not a consequence of my administrative policies. In the main it was the result of the Federal Reserve Board’s pre-1928 enormous inflation of credit at the request of European bankers which, as this narrative shows, I persistently tried to stop, but I was overruled.
• Eighteen months later, by early 1931, we were convalescing from our own ills when an economic hurricane struck us from abroad. The whole financial and economic structure of Europe collapsed at this time as a result of the delayed consequences of the First World War, the Versailles Treaty, and internal policies.