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As a side note: Duheme and Jacqueline Kennedy became friends who shared similar painting styles, and Duheme was invited to Cape Cod to give the First Lady an art lesson.
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The letters regarding the Vietnam war are the most interesting and provide some recognition of the clarity & forsight of Galbraith's mind.
Buy this book if you are interested in these men and the age of Camelot.
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Galbraith starts his book off with the people, and their mindsets, involved in the pre-crash years. In the beginning it seems that people would have known about the stock market crash eventually to occur, but if they did they did not care. People in the years from 1925 to 1929 played the stock market without really even paying for it. In those years you could go to a broker and purchase stock on margin, which means that instead of buying your stocks with the money you have, you put down 10% and make monthly payments. Since everyone was doing it the stock rose and was became worth more in days or even hours so you ended up not even paying for it. The average person would think at this point that people knew that this would not last forever, but they didn't care because they were making money at the time. The question is why did the government not do anything to stop this. Well before the crash Coolidge was in office and he did not care what happened. In 1929 Hoover was inaugurated and he and the F.R.B started having meetings every day about the condition of the stock market.
The first of many smaller crashes and recoveries starting occurring on Monday, March 25, 1929, in the following six months it was the most unreliable, jumpy market ever. Oddly enough though, the summer held much optimism for the market. The crash itself began on Thursday, October 24, 1929. Even at telegraphic speed, the volume of stocks exchanged was having an effect on time. Crowds started to gather outside of the NYSE trying to figure out what was going on and police had to be called to maintain control. On Friday, the market recovered. On Monday, October 28, 1929 over 9,250,000 shares trade but there was not much of a recovery and this lead to Black Tuesday.
Black Tuesday was the result of the stock market boom in the past 5 years. There were to be 16,410,030 shares traded on that day, everyone was trying to get out. In order to get out you had to get sell at market value. People were dumping their securities and causing even more downward pressure on the market. There was no recovery, the market had crashed and it would take a lot of time and effort to rebuild it. Finally there was the aftermath. People who were rich suddenly became poor in the span of a day. The suicide rate for the next few years rose. The entire world was affected by this crash and it eventually led into the great depression.
The author of this book presented a point, the point that people should have done something to prevent the crash of the stock market, and it was easy for him to succeed in proving this point, for what is there to prove. This book, which gives a account of the crash of the stock market in 1929 is accurate in all accounts and has no falsities in it as far as can be seen. The information is documented and there are many primary and secondary sources used in the writing of this book. This book is easily understood and is a great tool to explain the stock market crash.
True, the parallels are there. And I highly recommend the work if nothing more than to highlight in the reader's mind the elements of human nature that insure that we will always have depressions -- every 70 years or so ... secula seculorum... but in a small way, I expected more.
I find Galbraith (author of some 20 works on economics) to lack an emotional, visceral style that should have enunciated a polished telling of this critical set of events - (I say "set" because although October 24, 1929, or "Black Thursday" may have set events in motion... the bottom did not come until July, 1932). To borrow from Trekkies, if I may, I felt like I was following a history lesson from a Vulcan history professor. The chronology was well placed and organized, but there was nothing to help me "feel" the event.
Nonetheless, I appreciated the referral and the read. And I think that this work will have even more renewed interest when the world investment community eventually comes to grips with the lack of rationale in supporting stock values whose P/E ratios stretch well into infinity.
Greg Caton Lumen Foods (soybean.com) caton@soybean.com March 14, 1999
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The 20th is ending and the era of "ivory tower egghead" is coming ot a close. The preeminent egghead is Professor Galbraith and this books is a clarion call of a out of touch egghead socialist. Buy it for records.
As a former student of economics and history, only when one leaves the university does one realize none of these people have ever had a "real" job so much as working McDonald. Tenure has given them lifelong employment-what in China is called the "iron rice bowl".
Professor Galbraith has written over 30 books. However, has this man ever open a business, work at a private company, try to make a product or services that the people want and need.
Academica and Government are havens for those who want job security, lifetime employment and insulation from the marketplace and the "customer".
Professor is the ultimate egghead socialist and dreams up fantasies where everyone lives "fulfiling life" with jobs, health care, and education. The Soviet Union and China failed miserably building stagnant socialist economies and the whole world is moving from a planned economy to a market economy. This books by Professor Galbraith is a testament to "ivory tower egghead" who refuse to confront reality. Never mind the "egghead" refuses to get a real job where they have to actually work for a living.
I recommend all to buy this book. Agree or Disagree. This book is a final testament of the greatest "egghead" of them all and how the world is moving to markets and totally bypasses them and yet they continue to champion socialism and collectivism: ideas that are going the way of the dinosour.
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