Roosevelt: My friends, I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking-to talk with the comparatively few who understand the mechanics of banking, but more particularly with the overwhelming majority of you who use banks for the making of deposits and the drawing of checks. Try updating to the latest version of your browser. Your browser is unable to play the audio element. This excerpt from Roosevelt’s first “fireside chat” demonstrated the new president’s remarkable capacity to project his personal warmth and charm into the nation’s living rooms. Roosevelt himself declared a four-day “bank holiday” almost immediately upon taking office and made a national radio address on Sunday, March 12, 1933, to explain the banking problem. To stop the run on banks, many states simply closed their banks the day before Roosevelt’s inauguration. And they made clear the unpredictable relationship between public perception and general financial health-the extent to which the economy seemed to work as long as everyone believed that it would. The panics raised troubling questions about credit, value, and the nature of capitalism itself. Millions of Americans lost their money because they arrived at the bank too late to withdraw their savings. Banks never have as much in their vaults as people have deposited, and if all depositors claim their money at once, the bank is ruined. ![]() ![]() Between 19, 4,000 banks closed for good by 1933 the number rose to more than 9,000, with $2.5 billion in lost deposits. Roosevelt took office in 1933, one in four Americans was out of work nationally, but in some cities and some industries unemployment was well over 50 percent. ![]() “More Important Than Gold”: FDR’s First Fireside Chat
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