By Olu Wole Onemola
On the 4th of March, 1933, faced with the near-insurmountable odds of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) assumed office as the 32nd President of the United States of America. At the time, the economic forecasts of the United States seemed bleak with a 25% unemployment rate; a more than 60% drop in agricultural produce prices, and; over 11,000 banks closing their doors. Retrospectively, as the Roosevelt Institute now describes those dark days, America, “appeared to be falling into an economic abyss” that would have probably led to “the total breakdown of order.”