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The Monroe Doctrine was a foreign policy created by President James Monroe that warned European powers from interfering with any Western affairs.

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Communism is a political theory where all land is publicly owned and each person works and is paid based on their abilities.

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The Spanish-American War was fought between Spain and America and started because Spain sunk an American ship called USS Maine and it resulted in America gaining control over Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and Cuba.

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The Soviet Union was a communist country from 1922-1991 who formed after the Russian Revolution.

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A policy created in American to keep trade from China open to all other countries out of fear that Europe would start to control all the trade and leave America out of resources.

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Second Industrial Revolution was rapid economic growth and technological advancement in the U.S. Growing from agriculture to industrial power.

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A long lock-type water way that was built by America after they took over the job from France that dramatically decreased the distance and cost of shipping goods and resources.

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The Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 connected the East and West coast of the United States. This led to rapid settlement of western U.S. and made it easier to transport goods.

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A federal law passed that gave Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) the power to set maximum railroad rates.

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Multiple Anti-Trust Acts were passed in the late 1800s and early 1900s with the goal of curbing trusts and monopolies, maintaining the overall market competition, and prohibited illegal monopolistic practices.

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The US Forest Service was a progressive agency put into place by President Roosevelt that managed growing national forests and to conserve natural resources.

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This was an enactment from the Federal Reserve Act and its purpose is to establish a flexible, safe, and stable financial system.

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Richard M. Nixon is the 37th president of the United States. He is most remembered for his role in the Watergate scandal, which led to his resignation in 1974.

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A law established by President Woodrow Wilson that prohibited unfair methods of competition or unfair practices that will affect commerce.

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Late 1800s through early 1900s that characterizes a time period full of social and political changes.

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Osama bin Laden was the founder and leader of al-Qaeda. He orchestrated the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. His actions reshaped global security policies and initiated the U.S.-led War on Terror.

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The primary federal law in the U.S. governing water pollution. The purpose of the act was to maintain the integrity of water.

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The primary federal law in the U.S. for controlling air pollution was enacted in 1970. It was intended to reduce and control air pollution nationwide.

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Shelia Hu Writer/Researcher & Editorial Associate

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Since its bipartisan beginnings, this bedrock law has helped keep our air clean, combat climate change, and protect public health.

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The Great Recession was a severe global economic downturn in the 2000s. It led to massive job losses, bank failures, and it was the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression.

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The period known as the Great Moderation came to an end when the decade-long expansion in US housing market activity peaked in 2006 and residential construction began declining. In 2007, losses on mortgage-related financial assets began to cause strains in global financial markets, and in December 2007 the US economy entered a recession. That year several large financial firms experienced financial distress, and many financial markets experienced significant turbulence. In response, the Federal Reserve provided liquidity and support through a range of programs motivated by a desire to improve the functioning of financial markets and institutions, and thereby limit the harm to the US economy.Nonetheless, in the fall of 2008, the economic contraction worsened, ultimately becoming deep enough and protracted enough to acquire the label "the Great Recession." While the US economy bottomed out in the middle of 2009, the recovery in the years immediately following was by some measures unusually slow. The Federal Reserve has provided unprecedented monetary accommodation in response to the severity of the contraction and the gradual pace of the ensuing recovery. In addition, the financial crisis led to a range of major reforms in banking and financial regulation, congressional legislation that significantly affected the Federal Reserve.

Rise and Fall of the Housing Market

The recession and crisis followed an extended period of expansion in US housing construction, home prices, and housing credit. This expansion began in the 1990s and continued unabated through the 2001 recession, accelerating in the mid-2000s. Average home prices in the United States more than doubled between 1998 and 2006, the sharpest increase recorded in US history, and even larger gains were recorded in some regions. Home ownership in this period rose from 64 percent in 1994 to 69 percent in 2005, and residential investment grew from about 4.5 percent of US gross domestic product to about 6.5 percent over the same period. Roughly 40 percent of net private sector job creation between 2001 and 2005 was accounted for by employment in housing-related sectors.

The expansion in the housing sector was accompanied by an expansion in home mortgage borrowing by US households. Mortgage debt of US households rose from 61 percent of GDP in 1998 to 97 percent in 2006. A number of factors appear to have contributed to the growth in home mortgage debt. In the period after the 2001 recession, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) maintained a low federal funds rate, and some observers have suggested that by keeping interest rates low for a "prolonged period" and by only increasing them at a "measured pace" after 2004, the Federal Reserve contributed to the expansion in housing market activity (Taylor 2007). However, other analysts have suggested that such factors can only account for a small portion of the increase in housing activity (Bernanke 2010). Moreover, the historically low level of interest rates may have been due, in part, to large accumulations of savings in some emerging market economies, which acted to depress interest rates globally (Bernanke 2005). Others point to the growth of the market for mortgage-backed securities as contributing to the increase in borrowing. Historically, it was difficult for borrowers to obtain mortgages if they were perceived as a poor credit risk, perhaps because of a below-average credit history or the inability to provide a large down payment. But during the early and mid-2000s, high-risk, or "subprime," mortgages were offered by lenders who repackaged these loans into securities. The result was a large expansion in access to housing credit, helping to fuel the subsequent increase in demand that bid up home prices nationwide.

Effects on the Financial Sector

After home prices peaked in the beginning of 2007, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index, the extent to which prices might eventually fall became a significant question for the pricing of mortgage-related securities because large declines in home prices were viewed as likely to lead to an increase in mortgage defaults and higher losses to holders of such securities. Large, nationwide declines in home prices had been relatively rare in the US historical data, but the run-up in home prices also had been unprecedented in its scale and scope. Ultimately, home prices fell by over a fifth on average across the nation from the first quarter of 2007 to the second quarter of 2011. This decline in home prices helped to spark the financial crisis of 2007-08, as financial market participants faced considerable uncertainty about the incidence of losses on mortgage-related assets. In August 2007, pressures emerged in certain financial markets, particularly the market for asset-backed commercial paper, as money market investors became wary of exposures to subprime mortgages (Covitz, Liang, and Suarez 2009). In the spring of 2008, the investment bank Bear Stearns was acquired by JPMorgan Chase with the assistance of the Federal Reserve. In September, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, and the next day the Federal Reserve provided support to AIG, a large insurance and financial services company. Citigroup and Bank of America sought support from the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

The Fed's support to specific financial institutions was not the only expansion of central bank credit in response to the crisis. The Fed also introduced a number of new lending programs that provided liquidity to support a range of financial institutions and markets. These included a credit facility for "primary dealers," the broker-dealers that serve as counterparties for the Fed's open market operations, as well as lending programs designed to provide liquidity to money market mutual funds and the commercial paper market. Also introduced, in cooperation with the US Department of the Treasury, was the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), which was designed to ease credit conditions for households and businesses by extending credit to US holders of high-quality asset-backed securities.

About 350 members of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now gather for a rally in front of the U.S. Capitol March 11, 2008, to raise awareness of home foreclosure crisis and encourage Congress to help LMI families stay in their homes. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Initially, the expansion of Federal Reserve credit was financed by reducing the Federal Reserve's holdings of Treasury securities, in order to avoid an increase in bank reserves that would drive the federal funds rate below its target as banks sought to lend out their excess reserves. But in October 2008, the Federal Reserve gained the authority to pay banks interest on their excess reserves. This gave banks an incentive to hold onto their reserves rather than lending them out, thus mitigating the need for the Federal Reserve to offset its expanded lending with reductions in other assets.

Effects on the Broader Economy

The housing sector led not only the financial crisis, but also the downturn in broader economic activity. Residential investment peaked in 2006, as did employment in residential construction. The overall economy peaked in December 2007, the month the National Bureau of Economic Research recognizes as the beginning of the recession. The decline in overall economic activity was modest at first, but it steepened sharply in the fall of 2008 as stresses in financial markets reached their climax. From peak to trough, US gross domestic product fell by 4.3 percent, making this the deepest recession since World War II. It was also the longest, lasting eighteen months. The unemployment rate more than doubled, from less than 5 percent to 10 percent.

In response to weakening economic conditions, the FOMC lowered its target for the federal funds rate from 4.5 percent at the end of 2007 to 2 percent at the beginning of September 2008. As the financial crisis and the economic contraction intensified in the fall of 2008, the FOMC accelerated its interest rate cuts, taking the rate to its effective floor - a target range of 0 to 25 basis points - by the end of the year. In November 2008, the Federal Reserve also initiated the first in a series of large-scale asset purchase (LSAP) programs, buying mortgage-backed securities and longer-term Treasury securities. These purchases were intended to put downward pressure on long-term interest rates and improve financial conditions more broadly, thereby supporting economic activity (Bernanke 2012).

The recession ended in June 2009, but economic weakness persisted. Economic growth was only moderate - averaging about 2 percent in the first four years of the recovery - and the unemployment rate, particularly the rate of long-term unemployment, remained at historically elevated levels. In the face of this prolonged weakness, the Federal Reserve maintained an exceptionally low level for the federal funds rate target and sought new ways to provide additional monetary accommodation. These included additional LSAP programs, known more popularly as quantitative easing, or QE. The FOMC also began communicating its intentions for future policy settings more explicitly in its public statements, particularly the circumstances under which exceptionally low interest rates were likely to be appropriate. For example, in December 2012, the committee stated that it anticipates that exceptionally low interest rates would likely remain appropriate at least as long as the unemployment rate was above a threshold value of 6.5 percent and inflation was expected to be no more than a half percentage point above the committee's 2 percent longer-run goal. This strategy, known as "forward guidance," was intended to convince the public that rates would stay low at least until certain economic conditions were met, thereby putting downward pressure on longer-term interest rates.

Effects on Financial Regulation

When the financial market turmoil had subsided, attention naturally turned to reforms to the financial sector and its supervision and regulation, motivated by a desire to avoid similar events in the future. A number of measures have been proposed or put in place to reduce the risk of financial distress. For traditional banks, there are significant increases in the amount of required capital overall, with larger increases for so-called "systemically important" institutions (Bank for International Settlements 2011a; 2011b). Liquidity standards will for the first time formally limit the amount of banks' maturity transformation (Bank for International Settlements 2013). Regular stress testing will help both banks and regulators understand risks and will force banks to use earnings to build capital instead of paying dividends as conditions deteriorate (Board of Governors 2011).

The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 also created new provisions for the treatment of large financial institutions. For example, the Financial Stability Oversight Council has the authority to designate nontraditional credit intermediaries "Systemically Important Financial Institutions" (SIFIs), which subjects them to the oversight of the Federal Reserve. The act also created the Orderly Liquidation Authority (OLA), which allows the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to wind down certain institutions when the firm's failure is expected to pose a great risk to the financial system. Another provision of the act requires large financial institutions to create "living wills," which are detailed plans laying out how the institution could be resolved under US bankruptcy code without jeopardizing the rest of the financial system or requiring government support.

Like the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Inflation of the 1970s, the financial crisis of 2008 and the ensuing recession are vital areas of study for economists and policymakers. While it may be many years before the causes and consequences of these events are fully understood, the effort to untangle them is an important opportunity for the Federal Reserve and other agencies to learn lessons that can inform future policy.

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The 2007-09 economic crisis was deep and protracted enough to become known as "the Great Recession" and was followed by what was, by some measures, a long but unusually slow recovery.

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Shot heard 'round the world refers to the first shots fired at the beginning of the American Revolutionary War on April 19, 1775.

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Gerald R. Ford was the 38th president of the United States, succeeding Richard Nixon after he resigned due to the Watergate scandal. He's known for being the only U.S. president never elected for president or vice president.

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Watergate was a political scandal in the early 70s. It involved a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters that President Nixon tried to cover up. This scandal led to Nixon's resignation in 1974.

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Cutting taxes in the Reagan Era was a key part of “Reaganomics,” aiming to boost the economy by lowering taxes, reducing regulation, and encouraging private investment. This policy led to economic growth but also increased deficits and continues to influence debates about the government’s role in the economy.

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The Lend-Lease Program in 1941 was a U.S. plan to give weapons, food, and supplies to Allied countries like Britain and the Soviet Union during World War II.

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Late 1800s through early 1900s that characterizes a time period full of social and political changes.

(this is Marlee's but it won't let her post because she tried to do one with the word dr*gs)

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The Truman Doctrine, established by president Truman, was a foreign policy that said that the United States would provide political, military, and economic assistance to democratic nations that were under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces.

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NOTE TO READERS
"Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations" has been retired and is no longer maintained. For more information, please see the full notice.

With the Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. The Truman Doctrine effectively reoriented U.S. foreign policy, away from its usual stance of withdrawal from regional conflicts not directly involving the United States, to one of possible intervention in far away conflicts.

The Truman Doctrine arose from a speech delivered by President Truman before a joint session of Congress on . The immediate cause for the speech was a recent announcement by the British Government that, as of March 31, it would no longer provide military and economic assistance to the Greek Government in its civil war against the Greek Communist Party. Truman asked Congress to support the Greek Government against the Communists. He also asked Congress to provide assistance for Turkey, since that nation, too, had previously been dependent on British aid.

At the time, the U.S. Government believed that the Soviet Union supported the Greek Communist war effort and worried that if the Communists prevailed in the Greek civil war, the Soviets would ultimately influence Greek policy. In fact, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had deliberately refrained from providing any support to the Greek Communists and had forced Yugoslav Prime Minister Josip Tito to follow suit, much to the detriment of Soviet-Yugoslav relations. However, a number of other foreign policy problems also influenced President Truman's decision to actively aid Greece and Turkey. In 1946, four setbacks, in particular, had served to effectively torpedo any chance of achieving a durable post-war rapprochement with the Soviet Union: the Soviets' failure to withdraw their troops from northern Iran in early 1946 (as per the terms of the Tehran Declaration of 1943); Soviet attempts to pressure the Iranian Government into granting them oil concessions while supposedly fomenting irredentism by Azerbaijani separatists in northern Iran; Soviet efforts to force the Turkish Government into granting them base and transit rights through the Turkish Straits; and, the Soviet Government's rejection of the Baruch plan for international control over nuclear energy and weapons in June 1946.

In light of the deteriorating relationship with the Soviet Union and the appearance of Soviet meddling in Greek and Turkish affairs, the withdrawal of British assistance to Greece provided the necessary catalyst for the Truman Administration to reorient American foreign policy. Accordingly, in his speech, President Truman requested that Congress provide $400,000,000 worth of aid to both the Greek and Turkish Governments and support the dispatch of American civilian and military personnel and equipment to the region.

Truman justified his request on two grounds. He argued that a Communist victory in the Greek Civil War would endanger the political stability of Turkey, which would undermine the political stability of the Middle East. This could not be allowed in light of the region's immense strategic importance to U.S. national security. Truman also argued that the United States was compelled to assist "free peoples" in their struggles against "totalitarian regimes," because the spread of authoritarianism would "undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States." In the words of the Truman Doctrine, it became "the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

Truman argued that the United States could no longer stand by and allow the forcible expansion of Soviet totalitarianism into free, independent nations, because American national security now depended upon more than just the physical security of American territory. Rather, in a sharp break with its traditional avoidance of extensive foreign commitments beyond the Western Hemisphere during peacetime, the Truman Doctrine committed the United States to actively offering assistance to preserve the political integrity of democratic nations when such an offer was deemed to be in the best interest of the United States.

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Milestones: 1945-1952 - Office of the Historian

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The Economic Recovery Act, known as the Marshall plan, provided economic aid to Europe to restore the infrastructure of countries post WII.

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This was a charter that was created to increase regional security in the western hemisphere. The United States, Mexico, Canada, and most South American countries joined.

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The Berlin Blockade was imposed by the Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin and cut off all land and river transit between West and East Berlin.

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North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1945-1964)

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North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1945-1964)

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NATO is an alliance between countries in Europe and North America. It says that an attack to one country is an attack to all.

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The Korean war took place on the Korean Peninsula and was between communist North Korea and their allies, China and the Soviet Union, and South Korea and their allies, the United Nations Command.

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The Korean War | Retro Report | PBS LearningMedia

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This six-minute video provides students with an introduction to the Korean War, including its context within the Cold War, and the hardships faced by American soldiers on the battlefield. Focusing on President Truman's decision not to seek a formal Declaration of War from Congress, the video also sets up a discussion about the evolution and expansion of presidential war powers.

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The McCarthy Era was a period of time in the United States where the public was told to be suspicious of their neighbors and their possible involvement with communism as well as subversive communist influence on their lives.

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The Cold war was called cold because there was not actual fighting.

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The Cold War Explained In 15 Minutes | Best Cold War Documentary

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Gold and Silver mining played a big role in rapid westward expansion. Everyone wanted to find fortune. It fueled economic growth and created boomtowns

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Cattle Ranching was extremely popular in the Gilded Age as there were lots of free range cattle after the civil war, and because of population growth in certain areas such as the industrialized east, food was a large demand. This era helped the "cowboy culture" emerge like cattle drives, roundups, and branding. The railroad also played a vital role in cattle ranching, making it easier to ship cattle to the east.

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The late 19th century in the US where there was rapid industrialization, technological advancements, and economic growth, however also intense political corruption and inequalities in wealth and living conditions. Leads to the rise of labor/worker rights.

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A term used to describe powerful, wealthy, American industrialists and financiers who used ruthless and unethical business practices.

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Immigration surged and approximately 16 million immigrants arrived in the U.S. This was driven by economic opportunity, land shortages, and political and religious persecution in homelands.

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Chinese and Japanese immigrants who arrived on the West Coast faced significant discrimination. Led to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese immigration.

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Urban slums were overcrowded and unsanitary tenements, particularly in big cities, where mass immigration led to rapid and poor constructed buildings. People lived in small, dark, poorly ventilated apartments with little access to clean water or sanitation.

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Protests against low wages, long hours, and dangerous working conditions in the rapid industrializing U.S.

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A powerful labor organization advocating for an 8 hour work day, worker owned cooperatives, and abolition of child labor.

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A labor union that organized skilled craft workers and focused on achieving economic gains for its members, such as higher wages, shorter work days, and better working conditions.