Emergency Banking Relief Act
.svg) |
|
| Other short titles |
|
|---|---|
| Long title | An Act to provide relief in the existing national emergency in banking, and for other purposes. |
| Acronyms (colloquial) | EBA |
| Nicknames | Emergency Banking Act of 1933 |
| Enacted by | the 73rd United States Congress |
| Effective | March 9, 1933 |
| Citations | |
| Public law | 73-1 |
| Statutes at Large | 48 Stat. 1 |
| Legislative history | |
|
|
The Emergency Banking Act (the official title of which was the Emergency Banking Relief Act), Public Law 1, 48 Stat. 1 (March 9, 1933), was an act passed by the United States Congress in March 1933 in an attempt to stabilize the banking system. Beginning on February 14, 1933, Michigan, an industrial state which had been hit particularly hard by the Great Depression in the United States, declared an eight-day bank holiday. Fears of other bank closures spread from state to state as people rushed to withdraw their deposits while they still could do so. Within weeks, thirty-six other states held their own bank holidays in an attempt to stem the bank runs. The banking system was on the verge of collapse. On March 4, Delaware became the 48th and last state to close its banks. Following his inauguration on March 4, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt set out to rebuild confidence in the nation's banking system. On March 6 he declared a four-day banking holiday that kept all banks shut until Congress could act. A draft law prepared by the Treasury staff during Herbert Hoover's administration, was passed on March 9, 1933. The new law allowed the twelve Federal Reserve Banks to issue additional currency on good assets so that banks that reopened would be able to meet every legitimate call.
The Emergency Banking Act, an amendment to the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, was introduced on March 9, 1933 to a joint session of Congress, and was passed the same evening amid an atmosphere of chaos and uncertainty as over 100 new Democratic members of Congress swept into power determined to take radical steps to address banking failures and other economic malaise. The EBA was one of President Roosevelt's first projects in the first 100 days of his presidency. The sense of urgency was such that the act was passed with only a single copy available on the floor of the House of Representatives and legislators voted on it after the bill was read aloud to them by Chairman of the House Banking Committee Henry Steagall. Copies were made available to senators as the bill was being proposed in the Senate, after it had passed in the House.
...
Wikipedia