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Outdoor Living UK - The Great Crash, 1929 (Penguin business)
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List Price: £9.99
Our Price: £4.35
Your Save: £ 0.00 ( % )
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
Manufacturer: Penguin
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 330
EAN: 9780140136098
ISBN: 0140136096
Label: Penguin
Manufacturer: Penguin
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: 1992-10-29
Publisher: Penguin
Studio: Penguin
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining, Solid write up of the 1929 crash
Comment: This is a surprisingly good reference on the 1929 crash. The book is very readable considering the subject matter. For me the run up to the crash got a bit too much detail whereas the details of aftermath and solutions got less attention than I would have liked. He also focuses on trivia about suicide rates which is quite entertaining but doesn't seem to the point (which for me is to understand and avoid these kind of wild crashes).
We seem to have duplicated the conditions of this crash almost exactly in 2008 and indulged in the same property and derivative based speculation. It's also interesting that JK Galbraith goes against current (neo-liberal) orthodoxy e.g. the rich having too much money is destabilising rather than it being a benefit as 'trickle down' theory suggests.
So a good solid history, perhaps a little light on solutions. But, by ignoring history we seem to have repeated it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Have we come full circle?
Comment: John Kenneth Galbraith's classic study of the 1929 Wall Street crash is an exhilarating read. Galbraith combines a fluent, witty style with a detailed breakdown of the build up to disaster,
It is interesting to note how most of the experts - journalists, academics, businessmen, bankers and politicians didn't have a clue what was going to happen and thought that the good times would carry on rolling.
Gordon Brown anyone?
Customer Rating:
Summary: Will they never learn?
Comment: What strikes anyone who reads this after the events of the past three months is just how similar the events are which JKG chronicled and which we are seeing happen now. The creation of wealth with no basis in reality, the delusion of millions that somehow things could only go on getting better, even the reassurances of the pundits as things unravelled faster and faster (stocks were overvalued, a healthy shake out, imminent restoration of the situation, unlying stocks are sound, very soon the markets will receive organised support and so on). Yes the situation is very different but human nature and refusal to accept reality don't change. Recommended for anyone who relishes watching the rich and powerful step firmly on a banana skin.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Essential Reading
Comment: I found this book captivating, in a "gallows humor" sort of way.
Although written many years ago, and recounting events in the distant past, it should be required reading for anyone in the markets today. More specifically, it should have been required reading a year ago (mid 2007) for those invested in finance and property sectors.
Whether the malaise in those sectors (some stocks down 90%) spreads eventually to the general indexes remains to be seen.
Tony Loton, author --
DON'T LOSE MONEY! (in the Stock Markets)
Financial Trading Patterns
Customer Rating:
Summary: An excellent book and highly recommended to anyone with any interest whatsoever in economics or the dark days of 1929.
Comment: One of the most surprising and delightful things that I found about the book, particularly in view of the potentially heavy subject matter, was how wonderfully readable Professor Galbraith is. There are not that many world renowned experts in any field who can write as well as they can understand their subject. It's a bit like finding that a world class footballer can also play first violin. This book reads like the work of a top drawer professional writer who has immersed him/herself in the subject for a period and, with ongoing expert guidance and hands-on editing, has brought the subject home in fine style. It reads to me a bit like Tom Wolfe (of the Right Stuff etc), wonderfully literate, sardonic prose. It really is quite unexpected. Marvellous. You will have more than one chuckle out loud which may raise one of the live-in's eyebrows. Chuckling at economics now? Hmmm.
Anyway, the stock market fell, measured by the Times Industrial Average, from 542 down to 224, from October through Nov 1929, and then more gradually to only 58, basically a tenth of its peak 1929 value, by July 1932. Drastic times indeed. This residual value that the market held, 58, in 1932, was roughly the same amount by which the market fell, in only one day, 28/10/1929, Black Thursday. The Professor's contention seems to be that the Depression and the Crash, while not totally unrelated, were less connected than popular opinion held then, or holds now. The contention is that prior to the crash, that the economy was not fundamentally sound. Although there were no glaring warning signs in the economic indicators reported in the first half of 1929, there were some red lights flickering. The Professor goes on to detail and explain those. Of course I am still no expert on what happened in 1929 and why. But due to this book I have a better idea. And it has encouraged me to read more about it. Which I intend to do shortly. And further works by the extremely readable Professor Galbraith will most certainly be on my list.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Rampant speculation. Record trading volumes. Assets bought not because of their value but because the buyer believes he can sell them for more in a day or two, or an hour or two. Welcome to the late 1920s in the US. There are obvious and absolute parallels to the great bull market of the late 1990s, writes Galbraith in a new introduction dated 1997. Of course, Galbraith notes, every financial bubble since 1929 has been compared to the Great Crash, which is why this book has never been out of print since it became a bestseller in 1955. Galbraith writes with great wit and erudition about the perilous actions of investors and the curious inaction of the government. He notes that the problem wasn't a scarcity of securities to buy and sell: "The ingenuity and zeal with which companies were devised in which securities might be sold was as remarkable as anything." Those words become strikingly relevant in light of revenue-negative start-up companies coming into the market each week in the 1990s, along with fragmented pieces of established companies, like real estate and bottling plants. Of course, the 1920s were different from the 1990s. There was no safety net below citizens, no unemployment insurance or Social Security. And today we don't have the creepy investment trusts--in which shares of companies that held some stocks and bonds were sold for several times the assets' market value. But, boy, are the similarities spooky, particularly the prevailing trend at the time toward corporate mergers and industry consolidations--not to mention all the partially informed people who imagined themselves to be financial geniuses because the shares of stock they bought kept going up. --Lou Schuler, Amazon.com
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