"There will be no interruption of our permanent prosperity."
~ Myron E. Forbes
President, Pierce Arrow Motor Car Co., January 12, 1928
Just a brief post today to note an important anniversary: On this day eighty years ago the world fell apart. Beginning on Thursday, October 24, 1929 and culminating on Tuesday, October 29, 1929 — "Black Tuesday" — the U.S. stock market collapsed. The volume of trading that day set a record that remained unbroken until 1968.
"I cannot help but raise a dissenting voice to statements that we are living in a fool's paradise, and that prosperity in this country must necessarily diminish and recede in the near future."
~ E. H. H. Simmons
President, New York Stock Exchange, January 12, 1928
Many observers had warned that the economic bubble known as the Roaring Twenties was about to burst, but those warnings were dismissed by the people in power. Apparently, it was simply inconceivable that the good times might stop rolling.
"The Wall Street crash doesn't mean that there will be any general or serious business depression...For six years American business has been diverting a substantial part of its attention, its energies and its resources on the speculative game...Now that irrelevant, alien and hazardous adventure is over. Business has come home again, back to its job, providentially unscathed, sound in wind and limb, financially stronger than ever before."
~ Business Week, November 2, 1929
Business Week was a new magazine in 1929; with predictions like that, it's surprising it has lasted this long.
“No one can possibly have lived through the Great Depression without being scarred by it. No amount of experience since the depression can convince someone who has lived through it that the world is safe economically.”
~ Isaac Asimov
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