Over six terrifying, desperate days in October 1929, the fabulous fortune that Americans had built in stocks plunged with a fervor never seen before. At first, the drop seemed like a mistake, a mere glitch in the system. But as the decline gathered steam, so did the destruction. Over twenty-five billion dollars in individual wealth was lost, vanished, gone. People watched their dreams fade before their very eyes. Investing in the stock market would never be the same. Here, Wall Street Journal bureau chief Karen Blumenthal chronicles the six-day period that brought the country to its knees, from fascinating tales of key stock-market players, like Michael J. Meehan, an immigrant who started his career hustling cigars outside theaters and helped convince thousands to gamble their hard-earned money as never before, to riveting accounts of the power struggles between Wall Street and Washington, to poignant stories from those who lost their savings—and more—to the allure of stocks and the power of greed. For young readers living in an era of stock-market fascination, this engrossing account explains stock-market fundamentals while bringing to life the darkest days of the mammoth crash of 1929.
The classic examination of the 1929 financial collapse, with an introduction by economist James K. Galbraith Of John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash 1929, the Atlantic Monthly said: "Economic writings are seldom notable for their entertainment value, but this book is. Galbraith's prose has grace and wit, and he distills a good deal of sardonic fun from the whopping errors of the nation's oracles and the wondrous antics of the financial community." Originally published in 1955, Galbraith's book became an instant bestseller, and in the years since its release it has become the unparalleled point of reference for readers looking to understand American financial history."
*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the stock market crash written by newspapers and other contemporaries *Includes a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents The Roaring Twenties were an age of optimism. New technology was being invented, and novel products were making their way to the store shelves. Americans believed that a new era, driven by technology, was upon them, and this optimism extended to financial markets. Investments especially soared in the bond market, where investors lent money to companies, and the stock market, where investors bought partial ownership of companies. During the 1920s, financiers believed that the economy would continue to boom, as it had been since the end of World War I. As a result, investors and financiers increasingly accepted lower and lower returns on money they lent. In the stock market, the result was much the same: stocks skyrocketed throughout the 1920s, led by new technology stocks, such as Radio Corporation of America, or RCA, which made radios and owned broadcasters. However, the rampant purchasing and rise in prices meant that stock prices soon bore little relationship to the underlying value of the businesses, because the prices were bid up by investors. Prior to 1920, few middle class Americans owned shares in the stock market, but as the prices of stocks grew, the enthusiasm for purchasing stocks grew as well. More middle class Americans purchased stocks in the 1920s than ever before. As stock prices rose throughout the 1920s, some economists believed that stock prices would never fall back to where they had been before World War I. Economist Irving Fisher famously said "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." Some speculators even sought to capitalize on rising stock prices by borrowing money to buy stocks. Buying stocks with borrowed money had previously seemed very risky, because if the stock market declined, the speculator would be required to post additional collateral to back the loan. But with share prices continuously rising, buying with borrowed money seemed like a good way to make larger profits. However, during the fall of 1929, the stock market was becoming increasingly unstable. Prices would rise and fall rapidly, and some investors were becoming more cautious. Then, on October 24, 1929, the stock market lost 11% of its value right at the opening of the stock market. Panic ensued, but several prominent investment bankers were able to restore confidence by buying stocks well above the market rate. Investors were still extremely nervous, however, and when word of the panic spread over the weekend, investors flooded their brokers with sell orders for Monday morning. On Monday, October 28, the market fell almost 13%, earning it the moniker "Black Monday." The market fared no better the next day, falling nearly another 12% during what became known as "Black Tuesday." This time, efforts by wealthy investors, including members of the Rockefeller family and General Motors founder William C. Durant to restore confidence failed. Durant believed he could single-handedly restore confidence to the market by committing his whole fortune to buying stocks; instead, his business failed. Black Tuesday was a catastrophe the country wasn't ready for, and in fact, the market would not return to its 1929 peak until the 1950s. Black Tuesday is best remembered for investors and consumers making a run on banks that could not service everyone, and banks failed often during the Great Depression, due to bad loans and a lack of public confidence that produced further bank runs. The Federal Reserve was reluctant to backstop banks and protect them against bank runs, so banks were unable to borrow enough money to cover depositors' demands. When banks failed, depositors who couldn't get their money out of the bank were wiped out.
"The definitive account of the crash of 1987, a cautionary tale of how the U.S. financial system nearly collapsed ... Monday, October 19, 1987, was by far the worst day in Wall Street history. The market fell 22.6 percent--almost twice as bad as the worst day of 1929--equal to a loss of nearly 5,000 points today. But Black Monday was more than just a one-day market crash; it was seven years in the making and threatened the entire U.S. financial system. Drawing on superlative archival research and dozens of original interviews, the award-winning financial journalist Diana B. Henriques weaves a tale of ignored warnings, market delusions, and destructive decisions, a drama that stretches from New York and Washington to Chicago and California. Among the central characters are pension fund managers, bank presidents, government regulators, exchange executives, and a pair of university professors whose bright idea for reducing risk backfires with devastating consequences. As the story hurtles toward a terrible reckoning, the players struggle to avoid a national panic, and unexpected heroes step in to avert total disaster. For thirty years, investors, bankers, and regulators have failed to heed the lessons of Black Monday. But with uncanny precision, all the key fault lines of the devastating crisis of 2008--breakneck automation, poorly understood financial products fueled by vast amounts of borrowed money, fragmented regulation, gigantic herdlike investors--were first exposed as hazards in 1987. A First-Class Catastrophe offers a new way of looking not only at the past but at our financial future as well."--Dust jacket.
The Great Crash of 1929 profoundly disrupted the United States' confident march toward becoming the world's superpower. The breakneck growth of 1920s America -- with its boom in automobiles, electricity, credit lines, radio, and movies -- certainly presaged a serious recession by the decade's end, but not a depression. The totality of the collapse shocked the nation, and its duration scarred generations to come. In this lucid and fast-paced account of the cataclysm, award-winning writer Charles R. Morris pulls together the intricate threads of policy, ideology, international hatreds, and sheer individual cantankerousness that finally pushed the world economy over the brink and into a depression. While Morris anchors his narrative in the United States, he also fully investigates the poisonous political atmosphere of postwar Europe to reveal how treacherous the environment of the global economy was. It took heroic financial mismanagement, a glut-induced global collapse in agricultural prices, and a self-inflicted crash in world trade to cause the Great Depression. Deeply researched and vividly told, A Rabble of Dead Money anatomizes history's greatest economic catastrophe -- while noting the uncanny echoes for the present.
Argues that the stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent Depression occurred as a result of poor decisions on the part of four central bankers who jointly attempted to reconstruct international finance by reinstating the gold standard.
One of the classic studies of the Great Depression, featuring a new introduction by the author with insights into the economic crises of 1929 and today. In the twenty-five years since its publication, critics and scholars have praised historian Robert McElvaine’s sweeping and authoritative history of the Great Depression as one of the best and most readable studies of the era. Combining clear-eyed insight into the machinations of politicians and economists who struggled to revive the battered economy, personal stories from the average people who were hardest hit by an economic crisis beyond their control, and an evocative depiction of the popular culture of the decade, McElvaine paints an epic picture of an America brought to its knees—but also brought together by people’s widely shared plight. In a new introduction, McElvaine draws striking parallels between the roots of the Great Depression and the economic meltdown that followed in the wake of the credit crisis of 2008. He also examines the resurgence of anti-regulation free market ideology, beginning in the Reagan era, and argues that some economists and politicians revised history and ignored the lessons of the Depression era.
