Have Your Say Forum
    • Topic:
    • YesterYearNews
  • To: All
  • Message 1 of 2,
  • posted on 30-Oct-2009 17:21

New York City,  24 October 1929

  • The show-busines weekly Variety  summed it up in a headline.   WALL STREET LAYS AN EGG,  it proclaimed as millions of shares became worhless in a matter of hours,  and panic stricken brokers fought each other at the Stockexchange counters.   Their orders were to "sell at any price" - but there were few prepared to buy worthless pieces of paper to-day.
  • President Hoover's belief that the particapation by millions of small investore - farmers, bus drivers, road-sweepers, chorus girls and housewives among them - was "the final triumph over poverty" has been proved disastrously wrong.   Soon after Wall St. opened
  • for trade this morning, brisk selling caused value of shares to fall.    With the ticker tapes unable to cope with the volumn of traffic,
  • they fell further,  and as worried investors throughout the country add orders to sell,  the market plummeted until at 11.30 in was
  • in total chaos.
  • As leading bankers held an emergencu meeting to-day at the offices of J.P. Morgan & Co., the market rallied at the hope of intervention.    The bankers injection of $25 million into the market did ease matters,  but not for the thousands of small investors
  • who fought with riot police as they struggled to get to their brokers and sell.
  • The bankers tried hard to sooth and smooth things over ..."A minor adjustment" said one  ""A little distress selling" said another.
  • Elenven suicides in New York alone tell another story.
  • This happened 80 years ago,  almost on this day..........................Baldy Man
  • To: All
  • Message 2 of 2,
  • posted on 09-Nov-2009 23:07
mmmh!