16: INTO THE VORTEX
307 At particular times: Bagehot, “Edward Gibbon,” National Review, January 1856, in The Collected Works: Literary Essays, 352.
307 “stocks could be beat”: “The Magnet of Dancing Stock Prices,” New York Times, March 24, 1929.
308 The bubble began: Acampora, The Fourth Mega-Market, 129.
309 “The old-timers”: “The Magnet of Dancing Stock Prices,” New York Times, March 24, 1929.
310 “You could talk about Prohibition”: Cockburn, In Time of Trouble, quoted in Brooks, Once in Golconda, 82.
310 Anyone trying to throw doubt: Noyes, The Market Place, 322.
310 As the crowd piling
into the market: Charles, Merz. “Bull Market,” Harpers Monthly Magazine, April 1929, 643.
310 “bootblacks, household servants”: Charles, Merz. “Bull Market.” Harpers Monthly Magazine, April 1929, 643.
311 “Taxi drivers told you what to buy”: Baruch, The Public Year, 220.
311 “When the time comes that a shoeshine boy”: Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 488.
311 “hard losers and naggers”: Patterson, The Great Boom and Panic, 18.
311 Even the New York Times: “The Army of Women Who Watch the Ticker,” New York Times, March 31, 1929.
312 Biggest of them was Billy Durant: Sparling, Mystery Men of Wall Street, 3-42.
312 “History, which has a painful way”: “Warburg Assails Federal Reserve,” New York Times, March 8, 1929.
312 “sandbagging American prosperity”: Galbraith, The Great Crash, 77.
313 “Monty and Ben sowed the wind”: Chernow, The House of Morgan, 313.
313 “speculative orgy,” “There are many underlying reasons,” “stock speculation,” “The prevailing bull market”: “The Stock-Speculating Mania,” The Literary Digest, December 8, 1928.
314 It was from Washington: Ellis, A Nation in Torment, 40.
315 “displayed some life”: Moreau, The Golden Franc, 89.
315 “When the American people”: Interview with Roy Young, Committee on the History of the Federal Reserve System, Washington: Brookings Institution, 1954-55.
316 The following exchange: Hearings of Senate Committee on Banking and Currency on Brokers’ Loans. Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1928, quoted in Lawrence, Wall Street and Washington.
317 “oratory, ethics and provincialism”: “Federal Reserve versus Speculation,” Time, February 25, 1929.
317-18 “Wall Street has become the most notorious”: “Senate Votes to Ask Reserve Board How to Bar Speculation,” New York Times, February 12, 1929.
318 Nevertheless, in the last weeks: Letter from Strong to Walter Stewart, August 3, 1928, quoted in Chandler, Benjamin Strong, 460-61.
318 Strong’s successor: Matthew, Josephson. “Money Men are Different Now,” Saturday Evening Post, February 26, 1949.
319 “being young and new,” “had inherited all antagonisms”: Letter from Leffingwell to Edward Grenfell, May 29, 1919, quoted in Kunz, The Battle for Britain’s Gold Standard, 19.
319 With Strong dead: Interview with Leslie Rounds, Committee on the History of the Federal Reserve System, Washington: Brookings Institution, 1954-55.
320 “raise the prestige”: “Memorandum on conversation with Governor Young: March 6, 1929,” Goldenweiser Papers, Library of Congress, quoted in Clarke, Central Bank Cooperation, 156.