Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In this new book, Charles Morris tackles the white whale of economic history, the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, which has become a palimpsest of competing fads and trends in thinking about financial policy-making. During the past few decades, there has been a vast amount of high quality research into the causes and effects of the Crash and Great Depression, most of it by economists. But it is often marred by abstruse arguments between schools of economics, often with implicit political agendas.
There is no single theory of what caused the Great Depression, and never will be, Morris argues. Macreconomics is a social science, and such a massive event always takes its shape from a terrible confluence of factors. The mismanagement of the gold standard, the growth in consumer credit, the insistence on deflation by some of the best minds in finance, the spread of Fordism through the manufacturing sector, the global agricultural catastrophe, the tit-for-tat rise in protective tariffs, and the inability of the major European belligerents of World War I to agree on a reconstruction agenda, are just a few of the shocks that in aggregate pushed the world into an economic Armageddon.
Morris walks the reader through the multiple scenariosthe turning points where different policies might have led to different outcomesrewarding the reader with fresh appreciations and new insights. But he always tries to look through the eyes of the policymakers and businessmen of the times, with their perspectives and histories.
Morris does not fail to provide lessons that modern readers can learn from the Great Crash. In the 1920s, new technologies generated an extraordinary burst of productivity, radically reshaped American culture and mores, and disturbed the predictability of the market in ways that seem all too reminiscent of the present. It s tempting to pontificate about events of eighty years ago, but as Morris reminds us, our modern macroeconomics is still coming to terms with its failure to forecast how directly the much-trumpeted Great Moderation would lead to the Great Financial Crash of 2008."
Synopsis
The Great Crash of 1929 violently disrupted the United States' confident march toward becoming the world's superpower. The suddenness of the cataclysm and the long duration of the collapse scarred generations of Americans. A Rabble of Dead Money is a lucid and fast-paced account that pulls together the intricate threads of policy, ideology, international hatreds, and sheer cantankerousness that finally pushed the world economy over the brink.
Award-winning writer Charles R. Morris anchors his narrative in America while fully sketching the poisonous political atmosphere of postwar Europe. 1920s America was the embodiment of the modern age cars, electricity, credit, radio, movies. Breakneck growth presaged a serious recession by the decade's end, but not a depression. It took heroic financial mismanagement, a glut-induced global collapse in agricultural prices, and a self-inflicted crash in world trade to produce the Great Depression.
Vividly told and deeply researched, A Rabble of Dead Money anatomizes history's greatest economic catastrophe and draws its lessons for the present."
Synopsis
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.