Then...
“We will not have any more crashes in our time.” – John Maynard Keynes (1927)
“There will be no interruption of our permanent prosperity.” – Myron E. Forbes, President, Pierce Arrow Motor Car Co. (January 12, 1928)
“There is no cause to worry. The high tide of prosperity will continue.” – Andrew W. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury. (September 1929)
“There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash.” – Irving Fisher, Leading U.S. Economist, New York Times (Sept. 5, 1929)
“Secretary Lamont and officials of the Commerce Department today denied rumors that a severe depression in business and industrial activity was impending, which had been based on a mistaken interpretation of a review of industrial and credit conditions issued earlier in the day by the Federal ReserveBo ard.” – New York Times (October 14, 1929)
“This crash is not going to have much effect on business.” – Arthur Reynolds, Chairman of Continental Illinois Bank of Chicago (October 24, 1929)
“We feel that fundamentally Wall Street is sound, and that for people who can afford to pay for them outright, good stocks are cheap at these prices.” –Goodbody and Company Market-letter Quoted in The New York Times (Friday, October 25, 1929)
“Financial storm definitely passed.” – Bernard Baruch, cablegram to Winston Churchill (November 15, 1929)
“The Government’s business is in sound condition.” – Andrew W. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury (December 5, 1929)
“President Hoover predicted today that the worst effect of the crash upon unemployment will have been passed during the next sixty days.”WashingtonDispatch (March 8, 1930)
“Gentleman, you have come sixty days too late. The depression is over.” – Herbert Hoover, responding to a delegation requesting a public works program to help speed the recovery (June 1930)
“The worst is over without a doubt.” James J. Davis Secretary of Labor (June 29, 1930)
“We have hit bottom and are on the upswing.” – James J. Davis, Secretary of Labor (September 12, 1930)
“The country is not in good condition.” – Calvin Coolidge (January 20, 1931)
“The depression has ended.” – Dr. Julius Klein, Assistant Secretary of Commerce (June 9, 1931)
“In other periods of depression, it has always been possible to see some things which were solid and upon which you could base hope, but as I look about, I now see nothing to give ground to hope-nothing of man.” – Former President Calvin Coolidge, (1933)
H.H. Simmons, president of the New York Stock Exchange, Jan. 12, 1928: “I cannot help but raise a dissenting voice to statements that we are living in a fool’s paradise, and that prosperity in this country must necessarily diminish and recede in the near future.”
W. McNeel, market analyst, as quoted in the New York Herald Tribune, Oct. 30, 1929: “This is the time to buy stocks. This is the time to recall the words of the late J. P. Morgan… that any man who is bearish on America will go broke. Within a few days there is likely to be a bear panic rather than a bull panic. Many of the low prices as a result of this hysterical selling are not likely to be reached again in many years.”
Harvard Economic Society, Nov. 10, 1929: “… a serious depression seems improbable; [we expect] recovery of business next spring, with further improvement in the fall.”
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