Charles R. Morris - A Rabble of Dead Money: The Great Crash and the Global Depression: 1929–1939

Comeback: Americas New Economic Boom

The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution

The Sages: Warren Buffett, George Soros, Paul Volcker, and the Maelstrom of Markets

The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash

The Surgeons: Life and Death in a Top Heart Center

The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy

Money, Greed, and Risk: Why Financial Crises and Crashes Happen

American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built Americas Most Powerful Church

The AARP: Americas Most Powerful Lobby and the Clash of Generations

Computer Wars: The Fall of IBM and the Future of Global Technology

The Coming Global Boom: How to Benefit Now from Tomorrows Dynamic World Economy

Iron Destinies, Lost Opportunities: The Arms Race Between the United States and the Soviet Union, 19451987

A Time of Passion: America, 19601980

The Cost of Good Intentions: New York City and the Liberal Experiment, 19601975

European Defense Spending

Real ($1929) and Nominal US GNP, 19001929

Buick Sales, 19051910

Relative Sales Performance of Ford and GM, 19191929

Manufacturing Productivity in the United States, 18991937

US Crop and Meat Prices plus Output per Farm Worker, 19101930

US Monthly Industrial Production: 19201929

Dow Jones Industrial Average Monthly Close

US Real and Nominal GDP, 19291937

Percent Unemployed in United States: Civilian Labor Force, Civilian Private Nonfarm Labor Force, 19261941

Annual US Corporate Capital Flotations, 19261936

Ivar Kreuger : Closing Financial Position, at Book Value, 1932

Monetary Gold Holdings, Selected Countries

Newspaper Posting of Apartment Rental Rates, German Hyperinflation, 1923

Great Britains Current Account Woes

German Fiscal Follies, 19241929

US All-Farm Price Index

Ratio Hourly Manufacturing Pay per Unit of Output in the United States, 19191941

in Federal Liabilities (Percent GDP), 19301939

Apples-to-Apples Comparison, Roosevelt and Hoover Social Spending (Per Year, Per Capita, 1930 dollars)

US Industrial Production, March 1933January 1940

US Unemployment and Wages, 19291940

Combined US Manufacturing Payrolls and Gross Revenues, 19291934

Changes in Hours, Real and Nominal Wages, and Employment in Manufacturing, 19291933

US Durable Manufacturers Production, Prices, and Gross Revenues, 19291934

Comparison of US Durable/Nondurable Depression Production and Pricing Strategies

US Productivity Growth, 19291941

Collapse of Farm Prices

AZ Power with Standard Rates

A Five-Tier Holding Company Pyramid atop a Standard Utility Operating Capital Structure

Same Pyramid with 5 Percent on Equity

How Accountants Manufacture Earnings

T he Great Depression is an evergreen topic, and its gotten a particular boost from the events of the Great Recession. If nothing else, the disdain that practitioners of modern economic management often exhibit for the officialdom of the 1930s may now be leavened with some empathy. Noting all exceptions, and there werent many, the best people in the world of finance and economics were blindsided by the Recession, and the recovery has been long and frustrating. The lessons of the Depression did serve modern policy makers well, however, in designing remediations. Flooding the world with new liquidity would have been anathema to the managers of the 1930s.

I understand the Great Depression as a world phenomenon, with roots in World War I and its sequelae. The United States enjoyed the most successful economy, but signs of overheating were rife. By the time of the stock market crash, it was due for a major, possibly a nasty, correction. But it was the global Crash that turned an American correction into a Great Depression.

My perspective throughout the book is an American one, filtering the international events through American eyes, while keeping the important European events always in sight.

Part One is devoted to a description of American daily living in the 1920s. Radical changes were afoot in every aspect of life, many of them driven by new technology, especially the automobile and AC electricity. It was both a heady and a frightening time, with population migrations from south to north and from rural areas to cities. There were deep changes in the workplace and in relations between men and women. Electricity-enabled mass communications created flash-crowd mass events long before the internet.

Part Two lays out the industrial structure of America and details its underlying economic performance. The 1920s was a time when employers first grappled with the implications of mass production and their relations with employees, and there were the first fumbling attempts by big business to sort out its relations with government. The remarkable boom in financial markets unbalanced ethical compasses and set the sector up for a fall.

Part Three concentrates on the Crash in America. It happened in the first year of the presidency of the supremely gifted Herbert Hoover, a man who had never failed at anything. I examine the astonishing speed of the downturn, the impact on common people, the minimal attempts at remediation, and the consequences of the collapse. Two concluding sections chart the ruin of Samuel Insull and Ivar Kreuger.

Part Four takes a global perspective. It sketches a history of the gold standard, and the monetary pax Britannica that kept it on keel for so long. The central issue was how to reconstruct the international trading system, amid the poisonous atmosphere of mistrust and dishonesty that was the heritage of the war and the Treaty of Versailles. The major powersthe United States, Great Britain, France, and Germanyeach had quite different views on issues of war debts and reparations, on reconstructing the gold standard, and on the desirability of inflation or deflation.

Part Five returns to America and analyzes the initial recovery under Roosevelt, the 1937 downturn, and the subsequent recovery. I review a large swath of the current scholarship on the New Deal to appraise where it helped and where it got in the way. I also show that it wasnt World War II that ended the Depression, for it was already over before the war started.