Winston Churchill on the 1929 crash.

“Extraordinary optimism sustained an orgy of speculation. Books were written to prove that economic crisis was a phase which expanding business organisation and science had at last mastered. ‘We are apparently finished and done with economic cycles as we have known them,’ said the President of the New York Stock Exchange. A group of leading banks constituted a million-dollar pool to maintain and stabilise the market. All in vain. The whole wealth so swiftly gathered in the paper values of previous years vanished.

The prosperity of millions of homes had grown upon a gigantic structure of inflated credit now suddenly proved phantom.”

Plus ca change....

Thanks to Peter Mullen for that.