Title: 1929 - Wall Street Crash 

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About: An unprecedented stock market crash wiped out billions of dollars in value, plunging the world into the Great Depression, the longest and deepest economic downtown in history.

 

During the 1920s, the US stock market was booming, reaching its peak in August 1929, after a period of wild speculation. However, stocks greatly exceeded their real value, production was in decline, and unemployment was rising. Among the other causes of the eventual market collapse were low wages, the proliferation of debt, a struggling agricultural sector and an excess of large bank loans that could not be liquidated.

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Stock prices started to decline in September and early October 1929, and on October 18 the fall began. Panic set in, and on Black Thursday, October 24, a record 12,894,650 shares were traded. Investment companies and leading bankers attempted to stabilize the market by buying up great blocks of stock, stimulating a moderate rally on Friday.

 

But when trading opened on Monday the storm broke anew, and the market went into free fall.  Black Monday was followed by Black Tuesday, in which stock prices collapsed completely and 16,410,030 shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, thousands of investors were wiped out, and stock tickers ran hours behind because the machinery could not handle the frenzied volume of trading.

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The Wall Street Crash heralded the beginning of the Great Depression, with the whole global economy slumping. By 1932 stocks were worth only about 20 percent of their value in the summer of 1929. By 1933, almost half of America’s banks had failed, and unemployment was approaching 15 million people, or 30 percent of the workforce.

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Decade: 1920s

Year: 1929

Region: Worldwide

Country: USA

Society: Economics

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Type: Historical Event

Impact: 10

Artist: Jaroslaw Marcinek

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Group: Genesis

Number: 29/100

Price: 1 ETH

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