This diploma work is about the Great depression in 1930s and the World financial crisis. The aim of this work is to find both identical and different aspects which led to the crises and which could be observed in the course of the crises. Based on word description and analysis of macroeconomic indicators, in the diploma work is compared the pre-crisis situation and development in selected economies during the crises. Special attention is paid to the economic development in Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic).

The main goal of this thesis is comparison of FEDs monetary policy in times of Great Depression and financial crisis 2007 -- 2009. Both of them began when the speculative bubble burst (in the first case it was in stock market, in the second one it occurred in real estate market). The effect of speculative bubbles bursting had very negative impact on global economic system. The FEDs monetary reaction to the both crises was very different. It differentiates in many aspects -- in times of Great Depression FED acted passive -- did not provide large open market purchases, did not lowered the interest rate quick enough to avoid the money stock fall-down. In current crisis, FED did not repeat mistakes made during Great Depression. In response to the market pressure, FED created several unconventional tools to support liquidity of depository institutions, primary dealers and commercial paper market. Via these new-invented programs, FED did not allow the money stock to fall and as the financial strains eased, they slowly disappeared. Besides these liquidity programs, FED supported economy with fast interest rate lowering and providing quantitative easing. Steps taken by FED helped to stabilize financial markets.

This doctoral thesis sets out to analyse the development of the unemployed movement in Sweden during the period 1920–34. The study is divided into two parts. The first is empirical and descriptive while the second is interpretive and explanatory, and seeks to examine why this phenomenon developed in the way it did. Mass unemployment in Sweden between the World Wars did not cause the same social tensions as in many other countries. This relative peace endured despite high and consistent unemployment and hard living conditions for the unemployed. These conditions served as sources for tensions present in the unemployed movement, and which some actors sought to take advantage of and even exacerbate. Andréasson argues that a major reason that society did not take a more radical turn in the period was that the reformist labour movement actively moderated these tensions. This was done by the Social Democratic Party (SAP) changing the environment of the unemployed organisations, for example by using local unemployment policy to polish off the rough edges of the national unemployment policy. More important was the crisis politics in the early 1930s that helped narrow the socio-economic gap between those who had and those who did not have a job. The Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) neutralised the movement of the unemployed by introducing changes within the unemployed movement itself, involving a variety of strategies. After 1933, the LO and SAP dominated and were able to direct the activities of most of the organisations that existed. Gaining control over the unemployed was as important for the LO and SAP as being able to exert control over other forces that might threaten to weaken their long-term strategies and aims. There was a conviction within the unemployed movement that mass unemployment was largely a consequence of technological developments in production. This argument had roots dating back to the early stages of industrialism in England when Luddites had attacked production machinery. The coalition of organisations of unemployed workers in Sweden during the 1920s and 1930s did not seriously consider engaging in machine-breaking activities. The movement’s criticism of technology did not extend into the Swedish model which envisioned the development of machinery as a way to prevent rising unemployment. / QC 20100628

During the Great Depression, for the first time in its history, the federal government provided relief to the unemployed and destitute through myriad New Deal agencies. This dissertation examines how "general relief" (direct or "make-work") from federal programs—primarily the Emergency Relief and Construction Act (ERCA) and Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA)—was acquired and administered by the government of Texas through state administrative agencies. These agencies included the Chambers of Commerce (1932-1933), Unofficial Texas Relief Commission (1933), Texas Rehabilitation and Relief Commission (1933), Official Texas Relief Commission (1933-1934), Texas Relief Commission Division of the State Board of Control (1934), and the Department of Public Welfare (1939). Overall, the effective administration of general relief in the Lone Star State was undermined by a political ideology that persisted from, and was embodied by, the "Redeemer" Constitution of 1876.

Begun in Berlin, completed in exile in Paris, and premiered on both sides of the Atlantic, Kurt Weill's Symphony No. 2 sets up the symphony circa 1933 as both resolutely international and messily interdisciplinary, and spotlights how fundamentally a transnational approach is needed in order more comprehensively to understand both the genre and the localised political and social issues shaping symphonic discourse at this time. Taking the issues raised by Weill's symphony as a starting point, and borrowing fine-grained, historically synchronic approaches from year studies, this thesis examines the symphonic genre in 1933 through four other case-study works composed or premiered in that year. I thus position the symphony as a site of cultural exchange between and within the major contexts traversed by Weill and his work: Berlin, Paris, and a messier U.S. East-Coast nexus that centres on New York and Boston, via Mexico City, looking in detail at Hans Pfitzner's Symphony in C-sharp minor, Roy Harris's Symphony 1933, Aaron Copland's Short Symphony, and Arthur Honegger's Mouvement Symphonique nr. 3. The Germanic genre has long been associated with nationalism, monumentality, and power display, wedded to Germanic Enlightenment philosophical discourses about universalised selfhood and its relationship to society. 1933, the year in which Hitler took power and the Great Depression reached its peak, was politically and economically fraught, concentrating social questions that intersect with symphonic issues about power, selfhood, space, and mass audiences. It is also a neglected year within symphonic surveys. The thesis combines archival work and hermeneutic perspectives to foreground those social and political discourses historically associated with the genre. I argue for the significance of their differing legacies in co-existent contexts, for the complicity of the genre in establishing and perpetuating political and colonial hegemonies, and for the urgency of rethinking the symphony as an international phenomenon.

This thesis deals with political-economic globalization from the view of International Political Economy. The first chapter represents a theoretical framework and focuses, especially, on theoretical approaches towards globalization, role of nation state in a globalised environment, and global governance. The second chapter elaborately analyses the state of political-economic globalization during the Great Depression and the Great Recession at the outset of the 21st century, and examines the development of its economic and political aspects. In the end of the second chapter, these crises are compared to answer the research question, i.e. if and to what extend there has been a progress in the process of political-economic globalization since the Great Depression up to the present time.

The economic disaster known as the Great Depression struck Grayson County, Texas, in 1929, and full economic recovery did not come until the close of World War II. However, the people of Grayson benefited greatly between 1933 and 1946 from the myriad spending programs of the New Deal, the building of the Denison Dam that created Lake Texoma, and the establishment of Perrin Army Air Field. Utilizing statistical data from the United States Census and the Texas Almanac, this thesis analyzes the role of government spending‐federal, state, and local‐in the economic recovery in Grayson County.

Texas textile mills comprise an untold part of the modern South. The bulk of Texas mills were built between 1890 and 1925, a compressed period of expansion in contrast to the longer developmental pattern of mills in the rest of the United States. This compression meant that Texas mill owners benefited from knowledge gained from mill expansion elsewhere, and owners ran their mills along the same lines as the dominant southeastern model. Owners veered from the established pattern when conditions warranted. This case study focuses on three mills in Texas that operated both independently and as a corporation for a total of sixty years. One mill in McKinney dominated the economy of a small town and serves as the primary focus of this paper. A second mill in Waco served a diversified economy in the center of the state; and the third mill, built in Dallas was concentrated in a major city in a highly competitive job market. All three of these mills will illuminate the single greatest difference between Texas mills and mills elsewhere, the composition of the labor force. Women did not dominate the mill labor force in Texas nor did children, except in limited cases, make-up a large portion of the workers. Today mill studies of southern mills have found only scattered textile factories with a preponderance of male employees, but in Texas this was the norm. This study demonstrates the unique features of McKinney's textile mill and its similarities to other mills in Texas and in the southeast.

For many years newspapers were locally owned by editors and publishers. However, today many are run by corporations from out of state. As a result, many communities have lost the personal relationship between the family owned publication and the community. Gene Howe, who served as editor, publisher and columnist of the Amarillo Globe-News from 1926 until his death in 1952, believed the community was where the focus should be and the newspaper should do all that it can to help their readers. Despite the fact that Howe was not born in Amarillo, Texas, his passion and love for the city and its inhabitants compensated for it. During the Dust Bowl and Great Depression Howe and the Globe-News helped Amarillo survive the dust and economic storms that blew through the Texas Panhandle, an area that has not been written as much as other parts of Texas. Through his “Tactless Texan” column, which served as a pulpit to the community, to the various contests and promotions the newspaper sprang up, including the creation of Mother in Law Day, Gene Howe gave the newspaper another dimension little has been studied about, the role of the editor and publisher in guiding a community through a dramatic era. Understanding Howe’s ethos can allow others to examine the roles editors and newspapers play in communities throughout the country.

1 About Political and Economic Development of Austria in Years 1931-1934 Miroslav Šepták Abstract The aim of the presented dissertation is the analysis of the Austrian foreign political development in the years 1931-1934 with the emphasis on the general development of the international relations. Furthermore, the selected intra-political events and the economic and social development of Austria will not be omitted as well. The time frame of the presented dissertation, i.e. years 1931 and 1934, has been chosen with respect to the important events which exceeded the Austrian boarders because of their significance and impact on the contemporary international politics. The first milestone is connected with publication of the plan of the German-Austrian customs union. Assassination of the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss represents the second milestone. There occurs the deficit of the detailed analysis of the Austrian foreign policy, especially in the relationship towards Germany and Italy, in the existing historiography so far. It is particularly the absence of comparison of unpublished documents, Austrian, German and Czechoslovak, with related published sources, contemporary memoirs and press articles as well as scholarly literature. The presented dissertation, which is the result of the four-year...