By the summer of 1929, it is estimated that more than a million Americans had borrowed money to buy shares.Ī day-by-day clickable guide to the traumatic events of 1929 Until the 1920s, the markets were a game for professionals as the boom took off, share ownership broadened dramatically. In another way, 1929 was a highly modern crash. Richard Whitney, who parlayed a small Wall Street firm to market dominance through reckless borrowing and persistent theft, and who was president of the New York Stock Exchange during the crash, ended his career in disgrace and bankruptcy - but almost a decade later. Surprisingly few culprits were brought to book. On the eve of the crash, some 500 such trusts were in operation, with combined assets then worth $8bn, which is as a proportion of national wealth is the equivalent of $850bn in today's money. "There was a rush to sponsor investment trusts which would sponsor investment trusts, which would, in turn, sponsor investment trusts," wrote economist JK Galbraith in The Great Crash. Some of these trusts were honest and well-administered many were not, and the sheer complexity of the business quickly outpaced the knowledge of the investing public. The fourfold increase of the Dow Jones Industrial Average index after 1924 was fuelled in part by an extraordinary proliferation of investment trusts - companies created to invest in shares, financed by borrowed money. The second half of the 1920s was a time of remarkable economic achievement, as America reaped the twin dividends of post-war recovery and technological development. One apparently uncanny similarity between the busts of 1929-02 lies in the booms that preceded them.
In fact, the fit between 19 is seductive, but far from exact. The temptation to explore parallels with today - another period of economic uncertainty and post-boom gloom - is strong. "There was hardly a man or woman in the country whose attitude toward life had not been affected by it in some degree and was not now affected by the sudden and brutal shattering of hope," wrote Frederick Lewis Allen in his seminal 1931 memoir, Only Yesterday. Seventy-five years ago this week, US shares dived into the worst bear market in history
Markets may rise and markets may fall, but there was only ever one Wall Street Crash. The "national mania" hit the buffers exactly 75 years ago
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