The Economic Problems Then & Now

In Franklin D. Roosevelt's first Inaugural address, that took place on March 4th 1933, he addresses the economic problems that America was going through. He explained that is was becoming harder for Americans to pay bills, and that there are many unemployed Americans which is explained in this quote, "In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.” I can connect this to a modern day problem we are having in American right now, our economic crisis. Us, Americans are suffering from similar problems today.

“More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.” A quote pulled from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first Inaugural speech. In this quote Franklin Roosevelt is explaining how there are a lot of people who are unemployed and they are very unhappy. A quote taken from an article found online, loss of 1,000,000+ jobs this year portends serious problems for 2009”,talks about how we the number of unemployment is high but is only going to worsen in 2009. This quote said by Obama in a radio address, “We have now lost 1.2 million jobs this year, and if we don’t act swiftly and boldly, most experts now believe that we could lose millions of jobs next year”.

World War one is the main cause that led to the depression in the 1930's, which led to the New Deal during 1933-1938. The after-effect of World war one is what caused a big economy problem starting in the 1920's. Then in 1929 the stock market crashed, kind of similar to what’s happening to our stock market. It is said by istock analyst, “Corporate Corruption, Overvalued Stocks ,Mortgage crisis, Over unregulated financial institutions and Unregulated big speculators playing short” seem to be the top reasons for the 2007-2008 stock market crash. Back in 1929,” Overvalued Stocks, Low Margin Requirements, Interest Rate Hikes, Poor Banking Structures” was to blame for the stock market’s crash.

In our modern day society we are suffering from a major economic crisis. In an article I read they predicted, "If the economy does contract, economic seers expect a shallow retrenchment, most likely in the first six months of the year. Most see only limited improvement in the latter half. “So far what we have seen in our economic crisis is a majority of unemployed people, foreclosed homes, some companies are going Bankrupt, and even banks have to shut down.

These kinds of problems were also happening back then it was said that Banks were lending out much more money than what they had and that caused a lot of families to loose their savings. People were getting pay cuts at their jobs, a lot of products on the market such as home supplies weren’t being sold and forced companies to loose their business as well.

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