Monday, 4th June 2012.

Today in Social Sciences at the beginning of the class Paqui has asked for silence two or three times because we were speaking a lot. Then we have been in silence so we have started the class.

Paqui has explained us the proposals that were to solve the crisis with the help of the Power Point. The proposals were two: invest in public works to generate job and stimulation of production and consumption. Then Silvia has checked the exercise 5 that we had to finish cheking. Afterwards we have copied a small scheme about the New Deal. Paqui has also explained us about the decisions that were taken to reactivate economy that were various such as subsidies for farmers to destroy their stocks and recover prices, minimum prices to fight deflation and creation of the Public Works Administration to build big infraestructures with public money and create jobs.

Afterwards Paqui has explained the changed that the Social Legislation suffered, such as the Social Security Act, to give pensions and assistance for retired workers and disabled or abolition of child labour. There were also a lot of reforms in the Financial Legislation, like a banking reform to avoid another bankrupt and the creation of the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) to supervise the stocks market, Paqui has also explained it.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission headquarters 
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Securities_and_Exchange_Commission

Afterwards Paqui has explained us about the Three R Program or the New Deal., with a chart of different tasks to reactive economy. The Three R meaned Reform, Relief and Recovery and it included the creation of a big amount of federal agencies and public programs, known as the Alphabet Soup of Laws, due to the number of new acronyms created (AAA, PWA, WPA SEC, etc). Paqui has also explained us that some of the decisions taken were declared as unconstitucional by the Supreme Courts of Justice. Anyway these decisions created more workers, more demand, more consumption and more production of products. To finish with this, Paqui has showed us a graphic about the evolution of the unemployment people in the USA. The crisis didn't finished until the outbreak of WWII.

So at the end of the class we have started with the second point of the unit: Fascist Italy. Paqui has told us for homework to read pages 63 and 64 and summarize them following the next points:

• Italy after WWI
• Who Mussolini was and paramilitary and political groups he created and their way of acting and ideology.
• How the fascists reached power and how they transformed Italy in a totalitarian state.

At the end of the class Paqui has given a song called "Roaring Depression" based on the song "American Idiot" by Green Day. Nice song!

That's all for today!!