09:00 AM

Stock Market Trivia

So as not to alarm the public, President Hoover chose his words carefully when he discussed the state of the economy in 1929. American economists and politicians had referred to previous economic downturns as "Panics," such as the "Panic of 1873" and the "Panic of 1893." Hoover, however, called this latest downturn a "Depression" rather than a "Panic," and the name stuck.

Of course, America was not alone in the Great Depression; it struck all the industrialized nations of the world, including Germany, Britain, and France. Moreover, Germany still had huge reparation payments to make to the Allies in the aftermath of WWI. These reparation payments fueled spiraling inflation in Germany and crippled that nation's economy. The Allies themselves had borrowed money from the United States during the war, were unable to pay it all back during the 1920s, and were then not only broke, but in debt.