The
Wall Street Crash of 1929,
[1][2] also known as the
Great Crash or the
Stock Market Crash of 1929, was the most devastating
stock market crash in the history of the
United States, taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its fallout.
[3]Three phrases—Black Thursday, Black Monday, and Black Tuesday—are commonly used to describe this collapse of stock values. All three are appropriate, for the crash was not a one-day affair. The initial crash occurred on Thursday, October 24, 1929, but the catastrophic downturn of Monday, October 28 and Tuesday, October 29 precipitated widespread alarm and the onset of an unprecedented and long-lasting economic depression for the United States and the world. This stock market collapse continued for a month.
Economists and historians disagree as to what role the crash played in subsequent economic, social, and political events. The Economist argued in a 1998 article, "Briefly, the Depression did not start with the stockmarket crash."[4] Nor was it clear at the time of the crash that a depression was starting. On November 23, 1929, The Economist asked "Can a very serious Stock Exchange collapse produce a serious setback to industry when industrial production is for the most part in a healthy and balanced condition? ... Experts are agreed that there must be some setback, but there is not yet sufficient evidence to prove that it will be long or that it need go to the length of producing a general industrial depression." But The Economist cautioned "Some bank failures, no doubt, are also to be expected. In the circumstances will the banks have any margin left for financing commercial and industrial enterprises or will they not? The position of the banks is without doubt the key to the situation, and what this is going to be cannot be properly assessed until the dust has cleared away."[5]
The October 1929 crash came during a period of declining real estate values in the United States (which peaked in 1925) near the beginning of a chain of events that led to the Great Depression, a period of economic decline in the industrialized nations.
