Then, it began to slide. The public was not yet aware that the end had arrived. The roller coaster had dipped before. Surely it would shoot upward again. For five more weeks, the public bought heavily on the way down. More than a million shares were traded during that period. Then, on Thursday, October 24, like a giant school of fish suddenly turning direction in response to an unseen signal, thousands of investors stampeded to sell. The ticker tape was hopelessly overloaded. Prices tumbled. Thirteen million shares exchanged hands. Everyone said the bottom had dropped out of the market. They were wrong. Five days later, it did.
On Tuesday, October 29, the exchanges were crushed by an
avalanche of selling. At times there were no buyers at all. By the end of the trading session, over sixteen million shares had been dumped, in most cases at any price that was offered. Within a single day, millions of investors were wiped out. Within a few weeks of further decline, $3 billion of wealth had disappeared. Within twelve months, $40 billion had vanished. People who had counted their paper profits and thought they were rich suddenly found themselves to be very poor.
The other side of the coin is that, for every seller, there was a buyer. The insiders who had moved their investments into cash and gold were the buyers. It must be remembered that falling stock prices didn't necessarily mean that there was anything wrong with the stocks. Those representing solid companies were still paying dividends and were good investments—at a realistic price. In the panic, prices had tumbled far below their natural levels. Those who had the cash picked them up for a small fraction of their true worth.
Giant holding companies were formed for that task, such as Marine Midland Corporation, the Lehman Corporation, and the Equity Corporation. J.P. Morgan set up the food trust called Standard Brands. Like the shark swallowing the mackerel, the big speculators devoured the small.
500
THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND
There is no evidence that the Crash was planned for the
purpose of profit taking. In fact, there is much to show that the monetary scientists tried mightily to avert it, and might have done so had not their higher-priority agendas gotten in the way. Yet, once they realized the inevitability of a collapse in the market, they were not bashful about using their privileged position to take full advantage of it. In that sense, FDR's son-in-law, Curtis Dall, was right when he wrote: "It was the calculated 'shearing' of the public by the World Money Powers."1
NATURAL LAW NO. 5
Here is another of those "natural laws" of economics that needs to be added to our list:
LESSON: It is human nature for man to place personal
priorities ahead of all others. Even the best of men cannot long resist the temptation to benefit at the expense of their neighbors if the occasion is placed squarely before them. This is especially true when the means by which they benefit is obscure and not likely to be perceived as such. There may be exceptional men from time to time who can resist that temptation, but their numbers are small. The general rule will prevail in the long run.
A managed economy presents men with precisely that kind
of opportunity. The power to create and extinguish the nation's money supply provides unlimited potential for personal gain.
Throughout history the granting of that power has been
justified as being necessary to protect the public, but the results have always been the opposite. It has been used against the public and for the personal gain of those who control. Therefore,
LAW: When men are entrusted with the power to control
the money supply, they will eventually use that power to
confiscate the wealth of their neighbors.
There is no better illustration of that law than the Crash of 1929
and the lingering depression that followed.
1. Curtis B. Dall,
THE GREAT DUCK DINNER
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FROM CRASH TO DEPRESSION
The lingering depression is an important part of the story. The speculators had been ruined, but what they lost was money acquired without effort. There were some unfortunate souls who also lost their life savings, but only because they gambled those savings on call loans. Those who bought stock with money they actually possessed did not have to sell, and they did quite well in the long run. For the most part, something-for-nothing had merely been converted back into nothing. The price of stocks had plummeted, but the companies behind them were still producing products, still employing people, and still paying dividends. No one lost his job just because the market fell. The tulips were gone, but the wheat crop remained.
