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 | | The Crash and Its Aftermath: A History of Securities Markets in the United States, 1929-1933 (Contributions in Economics and Economic History) by Barrie A. Wigmore ISBN-10: 9780313245749 ISBN-10: 0-313-24574-6 ISBN-13: 9780313245749 ISBN-13: 978-0-313-24574-9 Hardcover 1985-12-23 Greenwood Press Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description This is the first book to focus on the broader structural changes which took place in the financial industry over the full period of decline from the Stock Market Crash in 1929 to the end of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "One Hundred Days" in 1933. The basis for many of Wigmore's comments is an analysis of 142 leading companies whose stocks constituted approximately 77 percent of the market value of all New York Stock Exchange stocks. Wigmore also examines the various bond markets and relates the money market to the bond market, monetary policy, business conditions, and the problems of the banking system. Treating each year from 1929 to 1933 separately, Wigmore shows the interrelation between the stock, bond, and money markets and events in politics, the economy, international trade and finance, and monetary policy. The Statistical Appendix of 41 tables consolidates financial statistics which have hitherto been widely dispersed, permitting in-depth study. | ||
Reviews | ||
The Great Unraveling Wigmore stresses that the Great Depression was not solely attributable to ill-advised monetary policy, but was primarily due to instabilities in the US economy. The 1929 stock market crash was the culmination of the speculative excesses of the 1920s: according to Wigmore, stock prices peaked at 30 times earnings and reached levels in excess of 400% of aggregate book value while return on equity was only about 16.5%. Wigmore studies the performance of the US banking system, and analyzes the measures the US government employed to address the crisis, such as the establishment of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the promulgation of the National Industrial Recovery Act. Exacerbating and prolonging the Depression were singularly unfortunate policy choices, such as the enactment of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act which seemed tailor-made to widen the disparity between US and overseas markets. Anyone interested in the monetarist-Keynesian debate as to how the Depression began or in the emergence of bureaucratic sprawl created in the wake of the New Deal will find this volume insightful. | ||
Hard reading, but mostly worth the effort This is a rather dry and verbose but also careful and thorough financial and economic history. I particularly like his explanation of why there was a banking crisis in 1933. Most other authors seem confused about this crisis, but Wigmore explains how the hints that Roosevelt planned to devalue the dollar, combined with a system under which bank deposits were tied to paper dollars but could be withdrawn as gold, made it safer to hold gold than to leave one's money in a bank. | ||