Friday, April 9, 2021

"A Brief History Of Doom"

 From one of the internet's tiny treasures, Delancy Place:

The Great Depression: A Real Estate Boom Gone Bust

Dear DelanceyPlace Subscribers:

Two years ago, my second book, A Brief History of Doom, was published. Many of you were kind enough to read and buy it. Recently, our good friends over at History Making Productions were helpful in putting together a video, which highlighted some of the key points in the book. I would love to share it with you and include it below. Thanks as always for your interest.  -- Richard

The 2008 Global Financial Crisis meltdown affected millions world-wide. Could it have been prevented? This question has been endlessly examined, all the more so with the current COVID crisis. A study of the history of financial crises from the early 1800s to the present—including the Great Depression and Japan’s 1990s crisis—gives us answers. In this video, author Richard Vague walks us through the causes of global financial crises from his book A Brief History of Doom and uncovers the keys on how they can be predicted and prevented, saving millions from financial distress and heartache.....

*****

....Today's encore selection -- from A Brief History of Doom by Richard Vague. Contrary to the explanation found in many histories of the Great Depression, that calamity was a massive real estate boom gone bust. Residential construction more than tripled, and the housing boom was every bit as large as in the Great Recession on a per capita basis. In Manhattan, more skyscrapers were built in the late 1920s than during any other comparable span in its history, and the skylines of most major U.S. cities are still testimony to the excesses of that era:

"The Great Depression brought a level of misery rarely seen in American history ... [and] was a massive residential and commercial real estate crisis. The financial records of the 1920s, which have largely been overlooked, indelibly show this. During the 1920s, annual housing and commercial real estate construc­tion almost tripled -- and nearly all of it was financed by debt....

....MUCH MORE, including video