Wall Street Crash of 1929 - Effects and Academic Debate

Effects and Academic Debate

Together, the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression formed the largest financial crisis of the 20th century. The panic of October 1929 has come to serve as a symbol of the economic contraction that gripped the world during the next decade. The crash of 1929 caused fear mixed with a vertiginous disorientation, but shock was quickly cauterized with denial, both official and mass-delusional. The falls in share prices on October 24 and 29, 1929 were practically instantaneous in all financial markets, except Japan.

The Wall Street Crash had a major impact on the U.S. and world economy, and it has been the source of intense academic debate—historical, economic and political—from its aftermath until the present day. Some people believed that abuses by utility holding companies contributed to the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Depression that followed. Many people blamed the crash on commercial banks that were too eager to put deposits at risk on the stock market.

The 1929 crash brought the Roaring Twenties to a shuddering halt. As tentatively expressed by economic historian Charles Kindleberger, in 1929 there was no lender of last resort effectively present, which, if it had existed and were properly exercised, would have been key in shortening the business slowdown that normally follows financial crises. The crash marked the beginning of widespread and long-lasting consequences for the United States. Historians still debate the question: did the 1929 Crash spark The Depression, or did it merely coincide with the bursting of a loose credit-inspired economic bubble? Only 16% of American households were invested in the stock market within the United States during the period leading up to the depression, suggesting that the crash carried somewhat less of a weight in causing the depression.

However, the psychological effects of the crash reverberated across the nation as business became aware of the difficulties in securing capital markets investments for new projects and expansions. Business uncertainty naturally affects job security for employees, and as the American worker (the consumer) faced uncertainty with regards to income, naturally the propensity to consume declined. The decline in stock prices caused bankruptcies and severe macroeconomic difficulties including contraction of credit, business closures, firing of workers, bank failures, decline of the money supply, and other economic depressing events.

The resultant rise of mass unemployment is seen as a result of the crash, although the crash is by no means the sole event that contributed to the depression. The Wall Street Crash is usually seen as having the greatest impact on the events that followed and therefore is widely regarded as signaling the downward economic slide that initiated the Great Depression. True or not, the consequences were dire for almost everybody. Most academic experts agree on one aspect of the crash: It wiped out billions of dollars of wealth in one day, and this immediately depressed consumer buying.

The failure set off a worldwide run on US gold deposits (i.e., the dollar), and forced the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates into the slump. Some 4,000 banks and other lenders ultimately failed. Also, the uptick rule, which allowed short selling only when the last tick in a stock's price was positive, was implemented after the 1929 market crash to prevent short sellers from driving the price of a stock down in a bear raid.

Economists and historians disagree as to what role the crash played in subsequent economic, social, and political events. The Economist argued in a 1998 article that the Depression did not start with the stockmarket crash. Nor was it clear at the time of the crash that a depression was starting. They asked, "Can a very serious Stock Exchange collapse produce a serious setback to industry when industrial production is for the most part in a healthy and balanced condition?" They argued that there must be some setback, but there was not yet sufficient evidence to prove that it will be long or that it need go to the length of producing a general industrial depression.

But The Economist also cautioned that some bank failures are also to be expected and some banks may not have any reserves left for financing commercial and industrial enterprises. They concluded that the position of the banks is the key to the situation, but what was going to happen could not have been foreseen."

Academics see the Wall Street Crash of 1929 as part of a historical process that was a part of the new theories of boom and bust. According to economists such as Joseph Schumpeter and Nikolai Kondratieff ans Charles E.Mitchell the crash was merely a historical event in the continuing process known as economic cycles. The impact of the crash was merely to increase the speed at which the cycle proceeded to its next level.

Milton Friedman's A Monetary History of the United States, co-written with Anna Schwartz, makes the argument that what made the "great contraction" so severe was not the downturn in the business cycle, protectionism, or the 1929 stock market crash. But instead what plunged the country into a deep depression, was the collapse of the banking system during three waves of panics over the 1930-33 period.