The Great Crash 1929

The most terrifying book I've read in a while. Galbraith recounts and analyzes the months leading up to the October 1929 stock market crash and the crash's aftermath. The book is frightening because almost every page has parallels to today's economic situation:

Around 1926-27, there was a real estate bubble in Florida; when that bubble popped, the stock market began to take off in its own bubble. Today the order is reversed: the stock bubble popped in 2001, and the housing bubble hasn't quite burst yet.

The downturn that led to the Depression actually started in June when indicators began sinking, but the abundant profits from stocks helped prop up spending. When stocks dropped, indicators sunk into a steep three-year decline. Today indicators bounce around from month to month, but generally they don't indicate much growth.

The income distribution in the 1920s was strongly skewed toward higher-income people; this meant that the economy was dependent on their purchases of luxury items. When the stock crash hit, this group was greatly affected and their reduced purchases made the downturn more serious.

Investment trusts used an incestuous web of cross-investments to inflate their performance, similarly to how Enron built a network of shell companies that traded among each other to create illusory profits.

Galbraith suggests that such speculative bubbles are an antidote against later bubbles; people are only willing to get burned once. He was already worriying that in the 1950s when this book was written, the lessons of 1929 were fading from memory. In 2005, the lessons are completely gone, but I expect many people will re-learn them in the next three or four years.