On the plus side, looking it up on Wikipedia revealed a number of political usages, including its first American occurence:

I found that interesting because, while the manner in which inflated stocks caused the American leg of the Great Depression is well known, what I've never seen anyone (save myself) address until now is how that affected the global economy, and why. Prior to the Depression America (in a way Wallace greatly simplifies) loaned the Central Powers money to pay reparations to the Allied Powers so they could pay interest on war loans from America so we could then loan that money to the Central Powers AGAIN, making interest off both. It was a great system (provided you're a large US bank making large international loans) until the stock market crashed, US unemployment hit 25% and America suddenly had no money to loan the Central Powers (mainly Germany, who got all the blame and thus all the accountability for the Great War). At that point Germanys economy went into a tailspin where it took a wheelbarrow full of deutschmarks to buy a loaf of bread (which always makes me think of the biblical prophecy of "a days wages for a loaf of bread" ) and soon took France and Britains with it. Hitler enters Stage Right.

If you're wondering why you've never heard of Wallace before despite the fact he was VP for a President who died in office, it's because of the successful movement to force FDR to dump Wallace before the 1944 election due to allegations he was up to his neck in commies. From all appearances it actually looks like those allegations were true, that while Wallace himself was not involved, virtually every level of Wallaces CAMPAIGN was riddled with people later revealed to be Soviet spies. Either way, Wallace was replaced with Truman at the Democratic National Convention, and when FDR died six months after the election he was President just in time to drop the first A-bomb. For the record, I included this last part just to prevent partisan accusations that I'm shilling for the Reds.