Banks Imploding, Panic in the City, Stock Markets in Turmoil, Investors Ruined . No, Not Today's Credit Crunch, but the Great Wall Street Crash. So What Can We Learn From the Year ... ; the Bubble Had Reached Bursting Point

Summary

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ON A roof in Wall Street, the banking area of New York, a maintenance worker was going about his business on the afternoon of October 24, 1929. Then he looked down and saw a big crowd in the street below watching him. They thought he was about to jump.

Shares on the New York Stock Exchange had been plummeting all day. There were rumours of suicides.

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Extract

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Banks Imploding, Panic in the City, Stock Markets in Turmoil, Investors Ruined . No, Not Today's Credit Crunch, but the Great Wall Street Crash. So What Can We Learn From the Year ... ; the Bubble Had Reached Bursting Point

The maintenance man seemed to fit the bill.

And so one of the great myths of the 1929 Wall Street crash was born. Bankers jumping out of skyscrapers and stockbrokers leaping to sudden death is the abiding image of economic collapse in all our minds.

But it is not strictly accurate.

History does record the fate of the executive of a cigar company at this time, perched on a high ledge in Manhattan and then plunging to his death below. But it turned out he was just trying to fix the radio aerial in his hotel room...

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