A Rabble of Dead Money: The Great Crash and the Global Depression: 1929-1939

A Rabble of Dead Money: The Great Crash and the Global Depression: 1929-1939

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

A Rabble of Dead Money: The Great Crash and the Global Depression: 1929-1939

by Charles R. Morris

Hardcover

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Overview

The Great Crash of 1929 profoundly disrupted the United States' confident march toward becoming the world's superpower. The breakneck growth of 1920s America — with its boom in automobiles, electricity, credit lines, radio, and movies — certainly presaged a serious recession by the decade's end, but not a depression. The totality of the collapse shocked the nation, and its duration scarred generations to come.

In this lucid and fast-paced account of the cataclysm, award-winning writer Charles R. Morris pulls together the intricate threads of policy, ideology, international hatreds, and sheer individual cantankerousness that finally pushed the world economy over the brink and into a depression. While Morris anchors his narrative in the United States, he also fully investigates the poisonous political atmosphere of postwar Europe to reveal how treacherous the environment of the global economy was. It took heroic financial mismanagement, a glut-induced global collapse in agricultural prices, and a self-inflicted crash in world trade to cause the Great Depression.

Deeply researched and vividly told, A Rabble of Dead Money anatomizes history's greatest economic catastrophe — while noting the uncanny echoes for the present.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781610395342
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Publication date: 03/07/2017
Pages: 416
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Charles R. Morris has written fifteen books, including The Coming Global Boom, a New York Times Notable Book; The Tycoons, a Barron's Best Book of 2005; and The Trillion Dollar Meltdown, winner of the Gerald Loeb Award and a New York Times bestseller. His recent book, The Dawn of Innovation, was named a Wall Street Journal Best Business Book of 2012. A lawyer and former banker, Morris's articles and reviews have appeared in many publications, including the Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal.

Table of Contents

List of Figures xii

Foreword xv

Prelude 1

Part 1 America Discovers the Modern 17

I The Jazz Age 19

II Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and Instill 24

III And Then Came Ford 30

IV Transformations: New York City 40

V The View from Below: Muncie, Indiana 50

VI Dislocations 58

Part 2 "One Heckuva Boom" 67

I Trickle-down Economics 69

II From War to Prosperity 72

III Electrifying Chicago 78

IV David Buick, Billy Durant, Alfred Sloan, and the Modern Car Industry 84

V What Happened to Ford? 92

VI A Productivity Bonanza 97

VII Spinoffs 100

VIII Laggards: Agriculture 103

IX Laggards: Real Estate 106

X On the Eve of the Crash 110

Part 3 The Crash in the United States 117

I New York Stock Exchange 119

II The Rise of Herbert Hoover 124

III Charting the Fall 130

IV The Worm's Eye View 137

V The Banking Crises of the Great Depression 149

VI The Twilight of the Gods I: Insull 155

VII The Twilight of the Gods II: Kreuger 167

Part 4 Blood, Gold, and Unpaid Debts 179

I Entanglements 181

II The Gold Standard 182

III Germany, 1919-1925: Vengeance, Reparations, and War Debts 189

IV The Dawes and Young Plans 196

V England, 1919-1925: Churchill (Sort of) Chooses Resumption 206

VI The French Rollercoaster 217

VII The End of Cooperation 221

VIII Germany Unravels 225

IX The Golden Jihad 231

X Getting What You Wish For 234

Part 5 Roosevelt, Reflation, and Recovery 241

I World Monetary & Economic Conference 243

II Devaluing the Dollar 246

III Creating the "New Deal" 257

IV The New Deal in Overview 262

V The New Deal in Detail 266

VI The Rest of the New Deal: A Roundup 271

VII Econometric Analyses 274

VIII Catastrophe 279

IX The Unemployment Conundrum 287

X The Great Leap Forward 298

Part 6 The Geology of the Collapse 301

I The Legacy of War 303

II The Big Picture 306

III The Details 313

IV A Postscript to the Reader 319

Acknowledgments 323

Photo Credits 325

Appendix: Milking the Insull Structure 327

Notes 335

Index 365

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