Black Tuesday
- Agricultural recession: Overproduction lowers prices, and this lowered price is made even more significant when crops are failing.
- Many people saw this as an omen of the coming depression.
- President Coleridge: "[It's okay,] farmers have always been poor."
- In 1929 the Dow Jones Industrial average collapsed.
- Continued selloff tool place until 1932 when the DJIA was 89% of its 1929 peak.
- People threw themselves from the top of high-rise buildings.
- Businesses go bankrupt.
- Banks close (unlike in 2008).
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“It came with a speed and ferocity that left men dazed. The bottom, simply fell out of the market..... The streets were crammed with a mixed crowd — agonized little speculators,... sold-out traders,... inquisitive individuals and tourists seeking ... a closer view of the national catastrophe..... Where was it going to end?”
-Account of the stock market crash in the New York Times. Subjunctive Question: What would the world look like if, after the crash and the depression, the United States decided that Communism was a better system after all...?
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