They supported backing the US dollar with silver because it would expand the money supply and result in inflation, yielding farmers higher prices for their crops while reducing the value of debts owed to banks and other creditors. Populists sought to put farmers and working-class people on a more equal political footing with banks and other large businesses. Silver also had the strong backing of the People’s Party of the USA, commonly known as the Populist Party, which emerged during an agricultural depression in the late 1880s. This increased the government’s silver purchase by 50 percent and was a boon to Colorado and other silver-mining states. The result was the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, which required the government to buy 4.5 million ounces of silver each month.

A glut in the silver market sent prices crashing-down 25 percent at the end of the 1880s-and worried mine owners appealed to Congress for help. By contrast, the state’s gold production was only one-third as valuable (or less) throughout the 1880s.īut the West’s silver boom undermined itself. After the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 required the federal government to buy a certain amount of silver each month, Colorado’s annual production of the metal remained steadily above 10 million ounces. Most Coloradans, awash in silver booms from Leadville to Aspen and the San Juans, wanted silver coinage. Support was largely sectional: northerners for gold, southerners and westerners for silver. Throughout the late nineteenth century, Americans engaged in a national debate over which metal-gold, silver, or both-should back US currency. Overall, the Panic of 1893 was a major inflection point in Colorado’s long history of boom-and-bust economic cycles, which began with the fur trade in the early 1800s and continued through the Colorado Gold Rush, the Panic of 1893, and sporadic oil and real estate booms in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The nationwide depression of agricultural prices also hurt Colorado’s farmers. The Panic of 1893 hit Colorado’s mining industry hard, throwing many miners out of work in places such as Leadville and Aspen.

The farmers who grew food for mining towns also suffered. When silver prices dropped, not only did mines close, so did the businesses that supplied them. In Colorado and other silver-mining states, the panic was tied to the abrupt collapse of the silver industry after two decades of explosive growth. Sanctions announced last week had already taken the Russian currency to its lowest level against the dollar in history.The Panic of 1893 touched off a nationwide economic depression that lasted for at least three years, threw millions out of work, and caused banks and businesses to fail across the country. It's a move that could quickly spiral into hyperinflation, economists warn. dollar and the euro, they may have to resort to printing more rubles. The Russian government will have to step in to support declining industries, banks and economic sectors, but without access to hard currencies like the U.S. These sanctions are poised to sting not only Russia’s elite, but average families who spend most of their income on essential items such as food and clothing, and depend on products that are imported and unofficially priced in dollars, Balmaceda said. 'But it's when those key players, those oligarchs, are going to feel the burn that's important.'Ī sharp devaluation of the ruble would mean a drop in the standard of living for the average Russian, economists and analysts say. 'The way sanctions are hitting now, it's the middle class and the upper-middle class, those who travel who are feeling it,' Balmaceda said. Over the weekend, social media posts showed lines snaking along streets with Russians attempting to take out as much foreign currency as possible from ATMs. Still, ordinary Russians remained anxious about the prospects of a lingering economic downturn. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the new Western sanctions, which include blocking some Russian banks from the SWIFT international payment system and restricting Russia's use of its massive foreign currency reserves, as 'heavy,' but argued Monday that 'Russia has the necessary potential to compensate the damage.' People stand in line last week to withdraw U.S.

Even before Russia's military assault on Ukraine, the inflation rate was at 8.7 percent in January, its highest since 2016. The Russian central bank also hiked interest rates to 20 percent from 9.5 percent in an emergency measure to protect the ruble's value, which at one point plunged below a penny before climbing back up.

Economix panic