Panic of 1837: New York City banks suspend the payment of specie, triggering a national banking crisis and an economic depression whose severity was not surpassed until the Great Depression.

The Panic of 1837 was a financial crisis in the United States that began a major depression which lasted until the mid-1840s. Profits, prices, and wages dropped, westward expansion was stalled, unemployment rose, and pessimism abounded.

A coin is a small object, usually round and flat, used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order to facilitate trade. They are most often issued by a government. Coins often have images, numerals, or text on them. The faces of coins or medals are sometimes called the obverse and the reverse, referring to the front and back sides, respectively. The obverse of a coin is commonly called heads, because it often depicts the head of a prominent person, and the reverse is known as tails.

An economic depression is a period of carried long-term economic downturn that is the result of lowered economic activity in one or more major national economies. It is often understood in economics that an economic crisis and the following recession that may be termed an economic depression are part of economic cycles where the slowdown of the economy follows economic growth and vice versa. It is a result of more severe economic problems or a downturn than a recession itself, which is a slowdown in economic activity over the course of the normal business cycle of growing economy.

In the United States, the Great Depression began with the Wall Street Crash of October 1929 and then spread worldwide. The nadir came in 1931–1933, and recovery came in 1940. The stock market crash marked the beginning of a decade of high unemployment, famine, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth as well as for personal advancement. Altogether, there was a general loss of confidence in the economic future.