A question about "Wall Street crash and Great Depression ".

The crash was enviable - look into the Tulip Mania, the South Sea Bubble, and the other previous corrections of the market. The problem is Laws usually are playing catch up - take the Bubble Act of 1720, it was not used until after it was too late. The problems are liquidity, fools believing in their overvalued assets (stocks), and other items that fuel the bubble and then when it bursts - the world will have to pick up the pieces.
-----------------
The usual thing I call the era between the two wars is "the era of all turns to glass." My argument is that the interwar period was ornamental and gaudy much like an Art Nouveau Tiffany lamp - all it takes is a black cat to come along and tip over the lamp onto the floor. The fall onto the floor is the Stock Market Crash. The war that follows is the cursing at the cat, tossing a shoe at the cat, and readying the dustpan. The Cold War is getting out the superglue and trying to remake the lamp with several missing pieces.
A new Gilded Age.
 
The prevention of the Great depression would require at least 2 major things in the 1920s: in depth knowledge of the boom & bust cycle and more active government that is willing to intervene. Only problem with that is the former is ASB* while the latter... was not really gonna happen**, especially when the economy appears to be doing rather fine***.


*as in, the knowledge required was literally being developed at the time and it took the great depression to actually put those theories to the test as government decided to throw everything and see what sticks. So it would require them having foresight and/or access to future knowledge
**one thing a lot of people (in general, not necessarily the population of this forum) forgot was how much FDR expanded federal power, which only the severity of the Great Depression allowed such thinking to be contemplated and acted upon.
***I mean, does anyone want to be the president who intentionally kept growth down in the name of some chicken little "too much growth is too good to be true?" Who the fuck (at the time) will believe you? And if you succeed no one will ever know and historians will never vindicate you.
 
Top