The economic booms and busts of the 20th century and what could be the biggest media release of all time.

From Marketplace in Washington, I'm Kimberly Adams.

This week, we've been looking back at some of the defining moments that have shaped the American economy over the last 250 years.

Yesterday, we left off in the midst of the roaring 20s, a period of

rapid growth after World War I. But as Professor William J. Collins points out, economic trouble

was already brewing beneath the surface. You know, but things in the 1920s were already kind of weak

in some sectors. The farming sector was

struggling, and that was still an important part of the American economy in the 1920s.

Then the stock market crashed in October of 1929, devastating America's economy and its people.

Millions lost their jobs, waited in breadlines for food, or lived in shanty towns, often called

Hoovervilles. Eventually, the government, under the command of newly elected president Franklin

Roosevelt, swept in with a series of policies starting in 1933. Jobs and agriculture programs,

banking reforms. Packaged together, they were called the New Deal.

And the sweeping changes made lasting changes to the American economy.

There are a bunch of reforms, like big reforms, that happen in the 1930s.

There are things that we sort of take for granted today, but were novel at the time.

Social, like all of the stuff in the Social Security Act, for instance.

And it wasn't just those social programs that gave the economy a boost.

World War II and the vast infrastructure required to supply the Allied fighting force

was a grim driver of growth and economic mobility for some.

And especially after the U.S. joins the war at the end of 1941, labor markets get super tight

that led to increasing wages for everyone, but especially for folks who tended to be at the

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