“This time is different” is almost always a seductive illusion
“The ordinary human being does not live long enough to draw any substantial benefit from his own experience. And no one, it seems, can benefit from the experiences of others.” Albert Einstein said. Each must learn its lesson anew, and as quickly as possible.
1929 is not just about money but also about greed, corruption, and incompetence. It’s a tale of power, psychology, and the seductive illusion “this time is different,” which is almost always not. It’s about disregarded alarm bells, financiers who fell from grace, and skeptics who saw the crash coming — only to be dismissed until it was too late. The author takes readers back to the stock market crash that changed the US and looks at what we can learn from it today.
The author relies on and brings unprecedented historical records of the 1929 market crash, and brings the era to life through vivid similarities of key characters like Charles Mitchell (National City Bank), Carter Glass (U.S. Senator), and John Raskob (General Motors), drawing parallels to present-day important persons, Elon Musk and Jamie Dimon. Including Evangeline Adams, astrologist known as the “stock market’s seer” then. Each scene is assembled from fragments.
The author lists the cast of characters and the companies they kept to take readers inside the chaos of an endless boom, and larger-than-life characters whose personal ambition led to disaster. The vertical highs and brutal lows of that era eerily mirror today’s world — where markets soar, political tensions mount, and the fight for control over resources and financial dominance plays out.
The author presents an immersive account of the epochal market collapse — and lessons that are as urgent and important as ever, but often ignored. This book is crucial for understanding the cycles of speculation, the euphoric forces that drive financial upheaval, and the warning signs people ignore at the right time.
From the Book
“By understanding the motivations and disparate stories of the central actors, we can begin to understand how this calamity happened. Which is why this is not a story about those who endured the fallout—it’s about those who helped set it in motion, because that’s where the responsibility lies, and where the lessons remain.”
“If the characters, issues, and policy choices from that time appear to echo our present moment a little too clearly, that’s because they do.”
“Senator Carter Glass, Democrat from Virginia, considered the stock market a tax on American prosperity and blamed bankers for heedlessly extending credit to speculators.”
“Today’s public may have a vague conception of what took place then, but few have any sense of the individuals who played a role in this drama, what they did to precipitate the crisis, why they failed to see it coming, and what steps they took to try to end it. Nor, more important, do they perceive the remarkable parallels between that era and today’s political and economic climate.”
“the greatest product was credit. … Borrowing became a habit, born along with optimism. So long as faith in tomorrow was maintained, debts could be rolled over endlessly into the future.”
“Lengthy, uninterrupted booms, like the one in the 1920s, produce a collective delusion. Optimism becomes a drug, or a religion, or some combination of both.”
“At the top of industry and government during any mania are people who are often no different than anyone else—flawed, self-interested, complicated. They push events forward, sometimes boldly, sometimes blindly, often without fully grasping the consequences of their actions. It is a slow boil—until everything spills over.”
“behind every major financial crisis is one thing: debt. It’s a powerfully optimistic force.”
“We all love an easy buck. Temptation has driven human folly for centuries, whether the serpent in the Garden of Eden or the market manias of cryptocurrency or artificial intelligence. Each wave seduces us into thinking that we’ve learned from history and, this time, we can’t be fooled. Then it happens again.”
