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This day, 87 years ago, on 4th March 1929 the German spy Herbert Hoover became the 31st President of the United States of American. He was in office during the onset of the Great Depression. When the U.S. entered the WWI in 1917, Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover head of the

Food Administration. Hoover encouraged Americans to reduce their consumption of meat & other commodities in order to ensure a steady supply of food and clothing for the Allied troops and after the war earned worldwide acclaim for providing Hoover lunches to the war-torn continent

He in fact oversaw an unprecedented intervention in the American economy to ensure that the United States & its allies were sufficiently provisioned to win the war. And as president he put the government to work in ways that were inconceivable to any of his predecessors.

Only 7 months after taking office as President a precipitous drop in the value of the U.S. stock market sent the economy spiralling downward. Herbert Hoover was not a laissez-faire president during the Great Depression. In fact, his actions may have made things worse.

He called business leaders to the White House to urge them not to lay off workers or cut wages - their usual reaction to a downturn to stabilize the economy and aid recovery, and to continue investing in new plants and equipment. He urged state and local governments to join

private charities in caring for Americans made destitute by the Depression. By 1931 when the financial meltdown was not abating he convinced Congress to accept a moratorium on the payment of international debt and enacted a series of federal policies to stimulate the economy

that some historians have referred to as the Hoover New Deal. The new Reconstruction Finance Corporation, established in January 1932, lent tax dollars to bail out American banks and businesses. By then Banks & businesses failed across the country. Nationwide unemployment rates

had risen from 3 percent in 1929 to 23 percent in 1932. Millions of Americans had lost their jobs, homes and savings. Many people were forced to wait in bread lines for food and to live in squalid shantytowns known derisively as Hoovervilles.

The Emergency Relief and Construction Act, enacted in July 1932, broadened the agency’s lending power to include financing state and local public works projects.
Hoover also approved substantial farm subsidy increases, eased requirements for the issuing of Federal Reserve notes.

In an attempt to pay for the new programs, Hoover signed the Revenue Act of 1932, which doubled the estate tax, hiked corporate tax rates and increased the top personal tax rate from 25 to 63 percent. All the while the US (& the UK under Stanley Baldwin) continued to bind its

Navy to the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty which Japan had signed in bad faith. This had been sponsored by German Intelligence to ensure that there would be a second world war and Germany and Japan would win it. Unsurprisingly no Axis battleship was ever built to Washington Treaty

The limits were 35,000 ton limit for battleships and 10,000 ton for heavy cruisers. The Italian Littorios weighed in at 41,000 tons

The Japanese built two Yamatos at 64,000 toms

and the Bismarks 41,700 and 42,900.

Thankfully Hoover lost his next election and was out of office this day 87 years ago on 4th March 1933 and The Department of the Navy (FDR & Churchill had previously dined together) and the first true post-Treaty American battleships the North Carolinas were built.

They were only 35,000 ton officially, but 42,000 tons is closer to the mark. By the time the Washington had been laid down the Japanese Takao class cruisers had already exceeded the limit by 20%.

Under International Law when countries sign a treaty in bad faith the other state parties are no longer bound. The UK's PM Stanley Baldwin and then Chancellor Chamberlain knew perfectly well that Japan and Italy had each signed the Treaty in bad faith,

but they wanted the Royal Navy to lose the next war in the Far East. Each wanted to surrender Britain's Far East Empire to the Japanese, and they were comfortable with the loss of life that would entail. Sources various inc.