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- softwaredoug“The Great Depression: A Diary” is a great day by day first person account of someone living through the depression. It’s a great reminder how we don’t have a monopoly on insane politicshttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6601224-the-great-depres...
- mitchbob> Andrew Ross Sorkin’s history of the 1929 stock market crash reminds us that financial bubbles are inevitable—and that another one may be about to pop.https://archive.ph/GQeez
- ninjagoo> Beyond the intrinsic difficulty of revivifying the top-hatted dead, Sorkin’s rendition is limited by his desire to frame 1929 as a story about people. His focus on individuals comes at the expense of analysis—particularly of the deeper economic forces that made the crash likely, if not inevitable. Sorkin is more interested in how the crisis felt than why it happened. He has little to say about why the government failed to take any meaningful steps to prevent it—or why, unlike in 2008, its responses failed so spectacularly.Sigh. This reviewer, Jacob Weisberg, is sadly either unfamiliar with the basics of major economic theories, or simply didn't connect the dots.> or why, unlike in 2008, its responses failed so spectacularly.Keynesian economics, which heavily influenced the 2008 response (fiscal stimulus part) to the financial crisis, didn't exist in useful form until 6 years after 1929. John Maynard Keynes’s book 'The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money', which is the foundational text of the field, came out in 1936.Additionally, on the monetary expansion side of things, Bernanke’s 2013 history of U.S. central banking [1] is useful: he says the Fed may have suffered less from lack of leadership than from the lack of an adequate intellectual framework for understanding what was happening, and that the dominant framework in place pushed them toward the wrong conclusions about whether aggressive expansion was needed or legitimate. And so monetary expansion attempts didn't occur until 1931/1932. Quantitative Easing, made famous in 2008, is a refinement on monetary expansion, I think.[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke201...
- tartoranWe may see it again soon
- sega_saiIt is a pretty good book, but when I got, I personally hoped for more finance in it. A large fraction of the book is devoted to people.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0When all was said and done the market crashed by 89% and took 25 years to recover to the previous high.
- anonundefined
- iainctduncan... "so far."
- lokinorkPerhaps the greatest buying opportunity of all time.
- anonundefined
- OrangePilledI saw this book at a local library and I set it back down. [0]> Beyond the intrinsic difficulty of revivifying the top-hatted dead, Sorkin’s rendition is limited by his desire to frame 1929 as a story about people. His focus on individuals comes at the expense of analysis—particularly of the deeper economic forces that made the crash likely, if not inevitable. Sorkin is more interested in how the crisis felt than why it happened. He has little to say about why the government failed to take any meaningful steps to prevent it—or why, unlike in 2008, its responses failed so spectacularly.Emphasis added.The review here seems intent on filling in the gaps it finds the author to have left himself.This one reads more critically:"1929: Sorkin Rounds Up the Usual Suspects"> [...] Sorkin stages morality play rather than history. He also helps set policymakers up for the kind of grand theatrical action they are inclined to take anyhow whenever markets turn down. In other words, another 1933- or 2008-style rescue: flooding the market with liquidity, and stringing up wrongdoers and even the better Wall Streeters, such as the Mitchells whom Sorkin seeks to rehab. The same subpar results are likely to follow.[...]> Were 1929 a documentary produced by Michael Moore, its suggestions would not matter. We are accustomed to illogic in television. But 1929 presents itself as the researched book Sorkin wants it to be. It therefore claims the authority that such books can carry.> Sorkin quotes H. G. Wells, who called human history “a race between education and catastrophe.” Indeed, indeed. But for education to beat catastrophe, that education must be a little more thorough.https://www.coolidgereview.com/articles/1929-crash-sorkin[0]: I was returning Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations by Walter Lacquer (1990). I found its research and ensuing narrative worth the effort.