Archive for the 'Economics' Category

Wall Street 1929 Part 4

In Paris a banker announces that America, because it controls the world’s wealth, must become the center of world culture, its opulent patron. In Texas, an oil man, recouping $25,000,000 that Wall Street took away from him five years ago, serves notice he is through with the market forever. And one of my friends, a [...]

Wall Street 1929 Part 3

PROSPERITY is the match-maker that inspired this mating which, twenty years ago, would have been damned as miscegenation. When the World War ended, you and I and our neighbor heard considerable talk about this singular quality. It seemed to be something intrinsically American. It stood for money in the pocket—in the bank. And we were [...]

Wall Street 1929 Part 2

Today Wall Street is the nation and Main Street is more Wall Street than Wall Street ever was—or probably ever will be. Wall Street is a state of mind; 20,000,000 men and women—investors and speculators—are its corporeal being; and the chattering tape that runs under the glass domes of 12, 000 tickers, up hill and [...]

Wall Street 1929 Part 1

HOW quickly indeed do we lose the feverish faiths and passions of our fathers. The memory of the average American is short, and shorter still the span of his conscience. In this it would seem he differs quite sensibly from the elephant. His capac-ity for sustained hatred is very largely modified by its immediate convenience.
We [...]

Introduction of Personal Loans Part 3

The spread of the personal loan department idea, moreover, will enable borrowers to snap up bargains which otherwise they might have been forced to let pass. A young couple, for instance, has a chance to buy a set of dining-room furniture at a ridiculously low figure, but have not enough cash on hand. [...]

Introduction of Personal Loans Part 2

The advantages to the borrower are even clearer. Attorney-General Ottinger, of New York State, has made a long investigation of the loan shark industry, and he has found that an uncomfortably large proportion of his fellow-citizens have been paying interest ranging from 14 to 36 per cent for loans which they could not, in most [...]

Introduction of Personal Loans Part 1

A Bank Taps a New Stratum of Customers
THE National City Bank, the largest institution in the United States, has opened a new era in banking by the establishment of a Personal Loan Department which will make personal loans without collateral to salaried men and women in amounts rang-ing from $50 to $1, 000.
Interest will be [...]

The Four Year Bull Market Part 3

STOCKS declined about 5 or 10 per cent in October and it looked as though the depression in business was to be the dominant factor. The recession, though, was brief. Prices soon headed upward once more.
Since speculation was becoming rampant and foreign countries had taken all the money they needed, the Reserve banks started to [...]

The Four Year Bull Market Part 2

THE most serious interruption to the stock market advance came in the early spring of 1926. The conditions which apparently brought it about are worth reviewing because they resemble in many ways those which have prevailed for the last few months.
There was no let-up in business activity. The records show that commerce and industry were [...]

The Four Year Bull Market Part 1

OBITUARIES of the “Coolidge bull market” may be premature but the long and persistent advance in stock prices that has lasted for four years has already become one of the major events in American financial history.
To the speculator who trembles when one of his issues drops five or ten points, its course may have seemed [...]