Democracy declined : the failed politics of consumer financial protection -- Full disclosure : building the U.S. political economy of credit -- "Storming mad" but staying home : depoliticizing the American borrower -- The "horseless headmen" : consumer groups and the challenge of political...

In the lead-up to the Great Depression, bank credit rapidly expanded and bank capital ratios declined. Banks, suffering from fallen commodity prices, failed at a high rate in the 1920s, and these failures rapidly accelerated in 1930. On January 22, 1932, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation...