Book of The Month: “1929” by Andrew Ross Sorkin, who also wrote "Too Big to Fail"
Editor’s Note: Because my parents went through the Great Depression, I thought I knew something about it. Yet in this book I learned that the stock market crash of October 30, 1929 was only the first of many. In fact, it took another 2.5 years (July, 1932) for the stock market to bottom out. And the “depression” was much more than the stock market since corporations wiped out by the crash caused massive employment and economic desperation for many families that lasted for over a decade. Sorkin’s historical perspective is unique since it mainly deals with the people and personalities, government, corporate and market makers specifically. Entirely, non-fiction, it reads like a novel. (my favorite kind of book!)
Excerpt: This, the closing paragraph, is amazing:
“The enduring lesson is not that booms can be prevented or busts can be fully averted. It is that we need to remember how easily we forget. The antidote to irrational exuberance is not regulation by itself, nor skepticism, but humility – the humility to know that no system is foolproof, no market fully rational and no generation exempt. The greater the heights of our certainty, the longer and harder we fall.”
