By 1929, Charles Mitchell, President of the National
City Bank (which would become Citibank), had popularized the idea of
selling stock and high yield bonds directly to smaller investors.
Mitchell and a very small group of bankers, brokers, and speculators
manipulated the stock market, grew wealthy and helped create the
economic boom of that fabulous decade.
Their successes made them folk heroes of the day. The
Crash of 1929 chronicles a fateful year through the words and
experiences of the descendants of these titans of finance.
In 1929, while the market was rising, seemingly
without limits, there were few critics. Based on eight years of
continued prosperity, presidents and economists alike confidently
predicted that America would soon enter a time when there would be no
more poverty, no more depressions — a “New Era” when everyone could be
rich.
Instead it was the rich who became became richer.
Jesse Livermore, a Wall Street insider, drove around town in one of six
yellow Rolls Royces. His daughter-in-law describes his two yachts,
private railway car and five homes, including an apartment on Fifth
Avenue he bought to have a place where he could change clothes for the
theater.