The Great Depression was undoubtedly the most traumatic economic event to date in American history. The stock market crash etched the year 1929 into the public's mind as the beginning of the historic depression, yet few people today are aware of the much larger financial convulsions that shook the world two years later. It wasn't until after these events - repudiation of monetary commitments by governments around the world, a crash in currency values, the worst month in U.S. stock market history to date, a collapse of bond markets, and a run on U.S. gold reserves - that the Depression truly...