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| 1931, June 20 |
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| President Hoover proposed a one-year moratorium on all intergovernmental debts as a way of easing the crisis. This followed the failure of the Austrian Credit-Austalt (See May 11) and worldwide fears of government and corporate bankruptcies. French opposition caused a significant delay. | 1 |
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| July 6 |
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| Acceptance of the moratorium by all major creditor governments was announced by President Hoover. European leaders saw the moratorium as an American acknowledgment that inter-Allied debts and reparations were closely connected. | 2 |
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| Aug. 19 |
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| The Layton-Wiggin report by an international committee of bankers meeting in Basel called for a six-month extension of all foreign credits to Germany. After this, Germany did not become fully solvent in international transactions. | 3 |
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| Sept. 21 |
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| The Bank of England went off the GOLD STANDARD despite credits from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Bank of France and the formation of a national coalition government to balance the budget. Great Britain experimented with a managed paper currency, and all of this created significant instability among those currencies that had been tied to the pound sterling. Eventually almost all countries were forced into currency devaluation. International trade greatly contracted in the absence of a major fixed medium of exchange. | 4 |
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| Sept. 18 |
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| Japanese occupation of the Manchurian towns of Mukden, Changchun, and Jilin (See 1931–32) took place in the context of the world economic disorder and Chinese internal instability. This was the informal beginning of a long war between Japan and China. | 5 |
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