Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo on June 28, but the subsequent diplomatic discussions dragged out for weeks. Germany s top officials ostensibly went on vacation in order to create the impression that the tensions could easily be resolved.

In the years preceding August 1914, until the assassination of the archduke, the global economy performed relatively well trade expanded worldwide, financial markets seemed healthy, and the business community shrugged off political problems as either temporary or irrelevant. It was a political breakdown that led to three terrible decades for the world economy.

In two years, Europeans will commemorate the centennial of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, and the subsequent July crisis that triggered World War I that August. On July 13, 1931, the German banking system collapsed, ensuring that what was previously an American economic downturn became the worldwide Great Depression.

The world s first wave of economic globalization, led by the British Empire in the nineteenth century, came to an end literally with a bang on a Sunday afternoon in 1914, when Gavrilo Princip killed (with two uncannily well aimed bullets) Austria s Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. The years that followed witnessed pan European carnage, instability throughout the 1920 s, and the rise of fascism and communism, culminating in the death of countless millions during World War II.