Andrew Ross Sorkin: What can the Great Crash of 1929 tell us about today?
6/13/20269 min
The Great Crash of 1929 has faded into history, but financial journalist and author Andrew Ross Sorkin argues it holds vital lessons for today.
Andrew came into the studio in London to discuss what we can understand about the crash in numbers, from ticker-tape running hours behind plunging stock prices to crucial metrics that sound the alarm bells before a financial crisis. Are they sounding today, in the middle of an AI stockmarket boom?
Andrew’s new book is ’1929: Inside the Crash’.
Presenter: Tim Harford Series Producer: Tom Colls Producer: Nathan Gower Editor: Richard Vadon Programme Coordinator: Brenda Brown Sound Engineer: James Beard
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsTim Harford· Host0:00
Thank you for downloading the More or Less podcast, we are weekly guide to the numbers in the news, in life, and in financial crises. [gentle music] Andrew Ross Sorkin is no strange to them. He's the author of Too Big to Fail, a behind-the-scenes account to the banking crisis of 2008, and a financial journalist at both the New York Times and CNBC. His new book looks further back. It's titled 1929: Inside the Crash. Andrew, welcome to More or Less.
Andrew Ross Sorkin· Guest0:30
Thank you for having me.
Tim Harford· Host0:31
Andrew, for those of us who are familiar with the history of finance, there is no bigger date than 1929. But for people who blessedly have forgotten, what was the Great Wall Street Crash?
Andrew Ross Sorkin· Guest0:45
The Great Wall Street Crash of 1929 was considered the first and most critical crash in the United States stock market. The 1920s was this remarkable roaring period. You had automobiles and radio and all this excitement about new technologies that were gonna change the world, and it was the first time that ordinary people could invest in the stock market. And they watched the market climb and climb and climb and climb, and in October of 1929, it crashed, and it crashed hard.
Tim Harford· Host1:15
I wanted to get a sense of just the scale of this crash. It's called the Great Crash. Is it fair to say it's the biggest financial crisis in, in history, and is there any way of putting a number on any of that?
Andrew Ross Sorkin· Guest1:26
I think if you look over not just 1929,