Reconstruction Finance Corporation
The Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was an independent government agency in the United States that was established in 1932 during the presidency of Herbert C. Hoover . Her job was to provide financial support to banks and other private companies during the Great Depression .
history
The activities of the RFC mainly comprised the granting of loans, for which it was endowed with capital of 500 million US dollars . In addition, she was given the option to borrow an additional $ 1.5 billion if necessary; that amount was later increased to $ 10.5 billion. Although the Railroad Credit Corporation was responsible for supporting railroad companies , the RFC also made loans to railroad companies because many banks had invested in the securities of these companies and a collapse of the railroad companies would have endangered the banks. In addition, after the Emergency Banking Act was passed in 1933 , it also bought up their preferred stocks and bonds to support the banks . In the mid-1930s, the RFC owned around 6,000 American banks.
The Reconstruction Finance Corporation, whose activities were expanded under President Franklin D. Roosevelt , became the most important institution in the framework of government measures of the New Deal . The director of the RFC was Jesse H. Jones from 1933 to 1939 , who was then Secretary of Commerce of the United States until 1945 . During the Second World War , the amount of loans granted per year by the RFC increased significantly, peaking in 1943 at six billion US dollars. The RFC was dissolved by a law passed by Congress in 1953 , and its business responsibilities were transferred to the Treasury Department with effect from June 1, 1954 .
literature
- Reconstruction Finance Corporation. In: Jerry W. Markham: A Financial History of the United States. First volume. ME Sharpe, Armonk 2002, ISBN 0-7656-0730-1 , pp. 161-163
- Reconstruction Finance Corporation. In: James Stuart Olson : Historical Dictionary of the Great Depression, 1929-1940. Greenwood Press, Westport 2001, ISBN 0-313-30618-4 , pp. 230/231
