#0110 · 🏛️ History Gone Off the Rails
Right Before the Biggest Stock Market Crash in History, Top Economists Swore Prices Would Never Fall
Days before the 1929 Wall Street crash, respected economists were publicly insisting the market had reached a permanently high, stable plateau.
Just days before the stock market crash of October 1929, renowned economist Irving Fisher publicly declared that stock prices on Wall Street had reached "a permanently high plateau" and that there was no reason to expect a collapse.
Within days, culminating in what became known as Black Thursday and Black Tuesday at the end of October, the New York stock market lost a massive share of its value, triggering panic among both individual and institutional investors.
The crash wasn’t the sole cause of the Great Depression, but it became its most recognizable symbol — market confidence collapsed for years, and in some cases it took more than a decade for indices to recover to pre-crash levels.
Fisher’s statement is cited in economics textbooks today as a classic example of how even respected experts can completely misread the signs of an impending market collapse.
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Krulicza Nora
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