JK Glabraith - The Great Crash, 1929

[Freewheeling Andy]

Just what you want, eh? A book about an economic crash written in the 1950s by an economics professor.

 

Oddly, though, this is not tedious and dry and difficult. It is, instead, actually quite funny and wry and very easy to read. As one of the comparisons on Amazon has it - not dissimilar to Tom Wolfe in the tone.

 

But what's really impressive about this book is quite how prescient it is. It was written after a little economic bubble burst in the 50s, the edition I have had a second preface written by Galbraith in the 70s, where the same thing had happened again. But it's really post credit-crunch that it really hits home.

 

He explains incredibly clearly what created the insane bubble economy of the late 1920s, and it's very easy to see all the parallels with what's been going on. As Glabraith says "every generation discovers leverage and thinks they've found a wonderful method of making money". In 29 it was through the creation of preference shares which took all the profit, and in multi-levels of shell holding companies. In our generation it's through tranching of mortgages and the insurance on them with credit default swaps.

 

But it's still finding a way of getting multiple profits from a fraction of the investment. And that only works when the market is going up. And it means people buy these products at way over the real value.

 

Anyway, if you want to read a book about economics to make you feel more comfortable in these rather scary economic times, this is probably your book. It's probably the only economics book I'll ever read where I'll actually laugh. And it's also probably the only one I can read in a day.

[Jack Dawkins]

Thanks for the recommendation,this book sounds very interesting