My final thesis deals with women's employment in USA and its changes during two historical moments of the World War II and Great Depression. Because of the continuous changes in this area an analysis of historical trends is a valuable source of information for understanding these changes. For a correct understanding of the influence of chosen historical periods the beginning of the thesis deals with an analysis of the situation before these periods. In the main part one chapter deals with the period of Great Depression, when women faced the pressure of the society to leave the labor market and leave the jobs to men, as to a main breadwinners. Next chapter describes trends during the World War II, when women work was promoted and the pressure was in the opposite direction. The last chapter analyzes a situation after the war and an impact of the World War II in both the short and long term. Special attention is given to two groups of women, married and Afro-American. These groups were influenced in given periods in a specific way. The reason why is mostly social norms within married women and disadvantages position of the Afro-American women in a labor market within this group. Aim of the thesis is not only description of the trends but also deeper analysis of governmental approaches, economical factors and social norms and it's interdependence and causality. From the trends we can see that changes in women's employment were strongly influenced by economic situation of the country and that social norms were able to adapt to these economic circumstances in a short term. In long term they were constant.

Main goal of the diploma thesis is to research liquidity management problems of the Federal Reserve System during banking crisis 1929 -- 1933. Monetary policy implementation based on the implicit reserve targeting was not convenient in times of sharp expansion of the demand for reserves. FED was misled by Real-bills and Riefler-Burgess doctrine and considers monetary condition to be easy. Money interest rates responded very moderately to the shortage of the banking system's liquidity. We can find origin of the first quantitative easing in 1932 when FED first bought larger quantities of the government securities. Expansionary monetary policy during the banking crisis 1929 -- 1933 was also potentially limited by the conflict among U.S. financial stability and sustainability of the gold standard.

This dissertation is concerned with international financial crisis response and the role that formal and informal international institutions play in this process. It is about understanding the potential of and limits to international crisis governance. It tries to answer three interrelated questions. First, what are the mechanics of international crisis lending? Second, what role can international institutions play in effectively distributing information so that policy responses can be optimized? Finally, what crisis governance structures are best suited to economic and political circumstances of the global financial system? In order to address these questions this dissertation uses a combination of formal (game theory) and informal theory building. It then examines these theoretical arguments using an empirical analysis based on historical survey of crisis response since the late nineteenth century and a comparative case study of crisis management during the Great Depression (1930-31) and the Asian Financial Crisis (1997-98). With regard to the first question, it argues that crisis lending is not simply shaped by the interaction of crisis lenders and borrowers. Ultimately, the terms of a crisis loan are negotiated in a space whose limits are determined by two additional actors: international investors/speculators and domestic political opposition. With regard to the second, it argues that both formal and informal international institutions play an important role in disseminating information and thus policy adaptation and change. However, there are clear limits to what institutions can do. In practice, this means that the goal of creating a crisis-free system is impossible. Finally, with regard to the broad question of crisis governance, it argues that the most effective financial governance system is one build around a partnership between a concert of key financial powers and an international financial institution dedicated to maintaining stability in the financial system.

The Great Depression elucidated the shortcomings of the banking system and its control by Wall Street. The creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 was insufficient to correct flaws in the banking system until the Banking Acts of 1933 and 1935. A.P. Giannini, the American-Italian founder of the Bank of America and Mormon Marriner S. Eccles, chairman of Federal Reserve Board (1935-1949), from California and Utah respectively, successfully worked to restrain the power of the eastern banking establishment. The Banking Act of 1935 was the capstone of their cooperation, a bill that placed open market operations in the hands of the Federal Reserve, thus diminishing the power of the New York Reserve. The creation of the Federal Housing Act, as orchestrated by Eccles, became a source of enormous revenue for Giannini. Giannini's wide use of branch banking and mass advertising was his contribution to American banking. Eccles's promotion of compensatory spending and eventual placement of monetary control in the hands of the Federal Reserve Board with Banking Act of 1935 and the Accord of 1951 and Giannini's branch banking diminished the likelihood of another sustained depression. As the Bank of America grew, and as Eccles became more aggressive in his fight for control of monetary policy, Secretary of State Henry Morgenthau, Jr., became a common enemy to both bankers. Morgenthau caused the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch an investigation of the Bank of America. Later, when Eccles and Giannini were no longer friends, the Board of Governors filed suit under the Clayton Act against Transamerica, a Giannini bank holding company. By 1945, Giannini's bank was the largest in the world. When John W. Snyder replaced Morgenthau, the "freeze" against Giannini's expansion stopped. Eccles was demoted by Truman but served on the Board of Governors until the Accord of 1951 making the Reserve no longer responsible for supporting the pegged interest rates of government bonds.

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Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / A historical analysis of the philanthropic response to the Great Depression by community foundations; the thesis uses the individual story of the Indianapolis Foundation as a case study to provide detailed examples of how community foundations modified their grant-making behavior in response to the Great Depression’s economic effects.

There are surprisingly detailed similarities between Germany and the USA on their way towards the Second World War. In this paper, I have compared the nations' expansionist philosophies, their encounter with racism, and the internal conflicts between authoritarian leadership and democracy. I began with an overview of Manifest Destiny and the German myth of the East. Next, I summed up the deep changes that the First World War caused for both societies and how they went into the Great Depression. I examined the rise of scientific racism as part of the international eugenics movement and the emergence of populist leaders during the economic crisis. It became clear that neither expansionism nor racism were genuine German ideologies. In fact, the American Manifest Destiny served as a role-model for German plans in the East. Even the racist concepts of the Third Reich were strongly influenced by American scientists. The main difference seems to be the experience with the First World War and the diversity of American protest during the crisis.

Marie Ogden's Home of Truth colony—a religious community that was located in southern Utah during the 1930s and 40s—was part of a segment of the American religious landscape that has largely been overlooked. As such, her movement points to a significant gap in the historiography of American religion. In addition to documenting the history of this obscure community, I situate Marie Ogden as part of what I call the early new age of American religion, an underdeveloped part of the broader categories of metaphysical religion or Western esotericism. This thesis also points to several other overlooked figures from the same era, suggesting several avenues for further study.

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