Word: gloom
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...with strong language. First it was Secretary of Commerce Roper, then Donald Richberg who tried to soothe the business jitters by loud strumming on silver-lined harps. Last week President Roosevelt selected as his newest goodwill ambassador Securities & Exchange Chairman Joseph Patrick Kennedy, dispatched him to Manhattan where business gloom is currently thickest. There in an address to 1,200 bankers, brokers and business executives at a luncheon of the American Arbitration Association, Mr. Kennedy scolded his audience as if its members were so many sulky schoolboys...
Bright spots amid last week's deep financial gloom (see p. 63) were the earnings statements of seven big corporations...
What was more, the gloom was worldwide. Heads of the European central banks gathered at a board meeting of the Bank for International Settlements at Basle, Switzerland, found fundamental conditions growing worse in every important economic area of the earth (see p. 20). After the meeting a New York Times correspondent wrote: "There is no feeling of despair and no fear of an immediate catastrophe anywhere, however. Pessimism comes from the continued lack of any indication of improvement in the basic factors . . . and discouragement from the fact that every one, despite all efforts made, feels he is forever fighting...
...fall of the pound has helped intensify the gloom but no single cause can be spotted. Business has tapered off very little from the peak of the upswing that began last autumn, yet the stockmarket last week rounded out a long month's decline...
Perhaps the strongest underlying cause for the current U. S. gloom was summed up last week by President Henry I. Harriman of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce who is by no means unfriendly to the Administration. "Faith in the New Deal is waning," he declared. "During the past two years I have crossed the continent many times . . . visited many sections . . . talked with people in all walks of life. And as a reporter I can say that up to the fall elections of 1934 the President had fully maintained his remarkable popularity...