The great crash, 1929
by John Kenneth Galbraith · first published 1955
67% recommend33% neutral
This classic tome is a detailed economic examination of the 1929 financial collapse written with wit and attitude.
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…I'd very strongly recommend the following: A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton G. Malkiel lays out the basics of portfolio diversification. http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780393340747-0 The Great Crash: 1929 by John K. Galbraith tells the story and aftermath of the biggest stock market catastrophe of the past century. It is a slim, highly readable, and incredibly informative book. Parts of it read as if…
on “Hard-won lessons about money and investing” ↗For a taste of what Chinese investors are going through I highly recommend Galbraith's "The Great Crash 1929" [1]. He gives fascinating insights into to the mania and crash of the market and the futility of the authorities to prop it up. Here's an excerpt: The worst continued to worsen. What looked one day…
on “China Trade Halts Locks Up $2.2 Trillion of Shares, Freezing Market” ↗…Galbraith's variant of Gresham's Law, in which "bad assets drive out good", during a crash, as the need to cover obligations as bad assets tank leads to sale of quality assets / securities. From The Great Crash: 1929. One of my favourite books.
on “Three Arrows Capital reportedly facing insolvency” ↗There's a fantastic book that just came out in ... 1954 ... that I'd highly recommend. John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash, 1929. https://www.worldcat.org/title/great-crash-1929/oclc/3136579... The tech and land booms of the time involved Florida real estate, railroads (a/k/a airlines), airlines (actual aircraft involved), "Radio"…
on “Today’s correction isn’t much like the dot-com bubble” ↗Go and read J.K. Galbraith's The Great Crash: 1929. It's a short book, an easy read, and quite informative. Particularly interesting is his examination of causes and ramifications. If you buy a recent edition, these have been updated through the 1960s…
on “Nassim Taleb: End Bonuses For Bankers” ↗Nit: "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." Profesor Irving Fisher of Yale, autumn, 1929, 3 days before the great crash. Quoted on page 70 of J.K. Gailbraith's The Great Crash 1929 which I very strongly recommend to anyone.
on “What to do if a bubble is starting” ↗John Kenneth Galbraith includes a good discussion of the Florida land rush in his book The Great Crash: 1929.
on “Map of Bell Systems Telephone Network (1910)” ↗…did the bad, and illegal, thing: doubled down and paid off the small number of exiting investors with new investor's deposits, whilst lying about returns. If you've read John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash: 1929 (a short and highly readable account), you'll find a very familar story in Madoff. He fell prey to what JKG calls "the bezzle".
on “Major Investor Sues Theranos” ↗…will go on. And I'd strongly recommend Galbraith: https://www.amazon.com/Money-Whence-Came-Where-Went/dp/06911... https://www.amazon.com/History-Financial-Euphoria-Penguin-Bu... https://www.amazon.com/Great-Crash-1929-Kenneth-Galbraith/dp...
on “Nassim Taleb: Bitcoin failed as a currency and became a speculative ponzi scheme” ↗…not in the interest of the financial industry to support advocacy for strong regulation against itself. https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/He+who+pays+the+piper+c.... John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash: 1929 gives interesting insights into prosecution and hearings following the Wall Street Crash which precipited the Great Depression and previous illegal and self-serving behaviours. I cannot recommend the…
on “Why didn’t any Wall Street CEOs go to jail after the financial crisis? (2019)” ↗…or rely on balance sheets for other investments find that they are short on cash. If what you need is cash, then what you sell is everything, no matter how low the price. John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash: 1929 covers this and numerous other elements of financial crises in clear and piercing detail. The book is a short and excellent read. Another element of investing is that the well-capitalised, reasonably-hedged…
on “Ask HN: What to do when the stock market falls like this?” ↗…idea to start just reading the different views in extreme. I'd also recommend Friedman's "A Monetary History of the United States" (with a part about the Great Depression) for a Monetarist POV. "The Great Crash, 1929" by Galbraith provides yet another (institutionalist/Post-Keynesian) POV. Rothbard was a pretty good scholar even if you completely disagree with him. His "An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic…
on “China Trade Halts Locks Up $2.2 Trillion of Shares, Freezing Market” ↗…far more often, asset inflation simply follows national and global monetary policy, most especially rising in times of loose money or easy loans (largely equivalent terms). John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash 1929 remains an excellent post mortem of one such event. To that extent, measuring GDP growth alone provides distorted view of actual wealth growth, both at the level of individuals (say, median, bottom quintile),…
on “Tidal Energy Is Not Renewable” ↗That sounds very eerily similar to J.K. Galbraith's description of trader collusion on the New York Stock Exchange in his classic The Great Crash 1929. In it he describes how traders would fix prices. The general public, though aware of this, still participated in the market -- there was no where else to invest, and there were some gains that could…
on “The Lessons For Facebook, Twitter And Reddit In Digg's Demise” ↗Finance have been doing this for a long time. See J.K. Galbraith's The Great Crash: 1929.
on “It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies” ↗