Crash
Aside

Looking up the 1929 crash I read these cheery words:

‘It was to take a generation — and a World War — to see any semblance of prosperity return.‘

I wasn’t born then but I remember the effects of the Depression and how one was always reading about some poor man jumping off a building. And sure enough WW2 got people off the dole and into the forces or factories.

Interestingly John Kenneth Galbraith had this to say:

‘It is a myth that the stock market crash of 1929 led to a wave of suicides. Suicides were actually higher when times were good. What did increase was the discovery of embezzlements after the crash because people had embezzled to put the money in the stock market with assurance that their profits would enable them to pay it back. With the crash, there was no money to pay back. And it was a myth that everyone was in the stock market. Only one-and a-half million of 120 million people were active in the stock market.’

I never understood – nor wish to – about bulls and bears, but apparently it isn’t wise to have more than £35,000 in one investment so that with Lloyds and HBOS merging if one had £35,000 in each of them say, one should move one of the £35,000 elsewhere. And – as Captain Manwaring says – we shouldn’t panic. Should things go pear shaped the government guarantees the £35,000 will be safe.

Oddly Northern Rock now seems to be one of the safest places to put one’s money. If you have just made the odd million from selling a house you are going to be busy scattering it hither and yon. The message seems to be – share it around and only play the stock market if you are prepared to lose it. I don’t believe in spreading gloom and am confident the powers that be will learn from 1929 how to avoid the worst happening. If you were born in the thirties tightening one’s belt is a common occurrence. So what’s new? Lionel Wheeler singing below is so evocative of that period.