1931 Drugs, Banks and Crashes
April 19, 1931, a shipment of drug-laden German woolens aboard the USS Milwaukee docked at NY. Six days later papers reported it contained 3 tons of narcotics shipped in woolens from Hamburg in northern Germany. The situation mirrored the Bank of United States failure as 5 tons of morphine sat on the docks in a stakeout at the French liner Alesia. The graph shows German gold reserves and Young Plan reparations payments bonds crashing in value following the news. Bank of United States trials were all over the news that week as well . Peter Temin, whose graph is above , is the same economist who pointed out the U.S. stock market began crashing the first week of September 1929. This was the week the League of Nations received planetary dope prohibition marching orders from its Opium Advisory Committee. In the above chart, failing bets on Germans paying war reparations coincide with the Nordwolle woolens bust, recover momentarily with the Moratorium on Brains and continue down...