1929 Market and Today

There is something that people must understand when it comes to the 1929 stock market crash. It happened in a approximately 3 1/2 years time. It did not take place over night. I am not an expert on the stock market but by comparing the photo's of the 1929 Dow Jones and today's Dow Jones, there are similarities.

This was Dow in 1929 until 1932:






And Dow Jones in 2008:




To me it seems as though it reaches a high point and then it dropped in the same format as today.

In 1932 the Pecora Commission was created to study what went wrong in the market crash. The similarities between the two times is very scary. This was posted in The Daily Paul website.

One of the main factors the Pecora Commission cited as a possible cause for the 1929 crash was the wide range of abusive practices on the part of banks and bank affiliates... these abusive practices included a variety of conflicts of interest such as the underwriting of unsound securities in order to pay off bad bank loans as well as "pool operations" to support the price of bank stocks... following the the Pecora Commission, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 was established to protect the public against the abuses made by the banking industry, unfortuntely; 70 years later, Wall Street interests were able to repeal Glass-Steagall Act in 1999.

Some of this sounds familiar does it not? It also goes on to say this:

With the Glass-Steagall Act repealed 1999, Wall Street was able to start its slow-motion repeat of the banking circumstances preceeding the 1929 crash, for example; the current US Secretary of Treasury is none other than an ex-CEO of the Wall Street giant investment bank; Goldman Sachs... Goldman Sachs has been heavily involved in the securitization business on Wall Street over the past decade... securitization is a buzzword for the packaging of debt which is then sold to investors, products like; sub-prime mortgages, CDO's, ABCP's, etc, etc, which have now been found to be riddled with fraud... and which are now at the base of Wall Streets problems.

They were not wrong in saying that history repeats itself. We have not learned a single thing from studying the past. The only thing we face is tougher times then that of the 1929 crash. The reason I say that is because they were not as lazy as we are today. Those people were not afraid to do a little hard work and make-do with what they had. We must start learning to plant, take trades, and kick any corrupt leaders to the curb.

People think we are heading into a rescission but I'm afraid we are past that point. The leaders are just printing off money and loaning it to the people who manipulated undereducated people. If I can see that then I am sure most of you have already seen this coming. Remember, the government is sugar coating the situation so people do not panic.

Bill Fleckenstein wrote this paper on the MSN MONEY web-site:

The economic and financial landscape of 2007 bears striking similarities to 1929. Back then, there were large, unregulated pool operators and other insiders constantly muscling the tape in whatever direction they chose. The public, too, was involved, thinking the country was experiencing a new era. Meanwhile, business began deteriorating in the spring of 1929, though the partying in stocks lasted until the fall.

Sounds familiar what is happening to our big businesses doesn't it?

To give you a flavor of those times, I'd like to quote from Frederick Lewis Allen's "Only Yesterday," which is one of my favorite books about 1929: "Mergers of industrial corporations and of banks were taking place with greater frequency than ever before, prompted not merely by the desire to reduce overhead expenses and avoid the rigors of cut-throat competition, but often by sheer corporate megalomania. (My emphasis.) And every rumor of a merger or a split-up or an issue of rights was the automatic signal for a leap in the prices of the stocks affected -- until it became altogether too tempting to the managers of many a concern to arrange a split-up or a merger or an issue rights not without a canny eye to their own speculative fortunes."

Obviously, I don't need to point out how similar that is to the practices we are seeing today.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you do not believe we are heading to a collapse then you are not opening your eyes to the evidence. Go as far as 1929 and study what went wrong yourselves. I am here just to open your eyes so that you may do your own research. Remember, I am not into business but I have done some research and what I found was stunning!

I will close this post with this video:

Google Video Link

Your opinions?

The world's communication, media, technology and consequently, global awareness in 1929 was the equivalent of 2 tin cans and a string. Today the world is so completely interconnected, these changes affect everyone more deeply - and much more quickly. This interconnectedness will only increase over time given our technological progress.

Your observation is correct. Just think about how many times a day we check online news sources for the latest information. That info is updated by the minute. In the 20's and 30's you were very lucky to get daily updates 'over the wire.' Many people received their updates weekly over the Saturday newsreel, and that info was sweeping and vague, leaving out any detail that might help you plan for the week (if the news were to actually affect you).

The world has changed. What you're witnessing now is monumental. Ask yourself - how will things of this magnitude play out in one years' time? Two years' time? We will be so tightly wrapped up in world events, we'll see what feels like decades of change in mere days. Then, in mere hours. There'll come a time when we can no longer mentally cope.

Yes. History repeats itself. It has for along time. The repetitions are becoming more frequent and a heck of alot quicker. Get ready for the future. Oh wait, there it went...

reply to post by Evasius


I totally agree. The funny thing is that a lot of people are still in denial of the coming calamity. I can't stress enough how these times are going to be the ones to either make us or break us. I just hope we learn after this.

***Bump***

I thought this was an important issue to discuss. I'm going to bump it once and see what happens.

Yes both today and 1929 have a lot in common and the most significant is both
were caused by the federal reserve bank through the manipulation of money and interest rates.While news was slower in it's arrival in 1929 it was much more honest and dependable.