The Great Crash, 1929 The Great Crash, 1929 The Great Crash, 1929 is a book written by John Kenneth Galbraith and published in 1955; it is an economic history of the lead-up to the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The book argues that the 1929 stock market crash was precipitated by rampant speculation in the stock market, that the common denominator of all speculative episodes is the belief of participants that they can become rich without work and that the tendency towards recurrent speculative orgy serves no useful purpose, but rather is deeply damaging to an economy. It was Galbraith's belief that a good
Wall Street Crash of 1929 Shortly before the crash, economist Irving Fisher famously proclaimed, "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." The optimism and financial gains of the great bull market were shaken after a well publicized early September prediction from financial expert Roger Babson that "a crash was coming". The initial September decline was thus called the "Babson Break" in the press. This was the start of the Great Crash, although until the severe phase of the crash in October, many investors regarded the September "Babson Break" as a "healthy correction" and buying opportunity. On September 20, the London Stock