The Crash of 1929

1929 CE — North America, United States

Today: The United States (Wall Street)

A decade of giddy speculation, much of it on borrowed money, ended when the American stock market collapsed — and the crash cascaded into the Great Depression, a global slump that threw a quarter of workers out of jobs and fed authoritarian movements around the world. It was mania and debt unwinding at once, the same curve as the 1720 bubbles. And its misery cashed out, again, as a political hunger for strongmen who promised to make it stop.

Worth knowing: Counterintuitively, American life expectancy actually rose during the Great Depression — as fewer people could afford to drink, drive, or overwork, the quieter, poorer years proved less deadly than the boom.

Pattern: Mania & panic — A speculative belief detaches asset prices from fundamentals; the belief breaks and prices collapse.

Entry 212 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.