I'll be back to my Reagan-Roosevelt comparison shortly, but another historical comparison came up at dinner Saturday night: what has had the bigger impact on history, the stock market crash of 1929 or the crash of the planes into the WTC on 9/11? At first pass, you'd be tempted to say 9/11, for it had lasting geopolitical implication with the ensuing regime changes in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention a more pro-US Pakistan.
However, if you take a look at the long-term fallout of the stock-market crash, it had a larger economic and geopolitical impact. Yes, purists will point to lousy Fed policies and a Smoot-Hawley Act that were causes of the crash, but the result was a world-wide depression. On this side of the pond, it led to FDR and the New Deal, while over in Germany, the bad economy made people desperate enough to vote Hitler into power. In comparison, the economic disruptions from 9/11 were minimal.
What sayest thou?
Stock market crash. October 1929 leads to depression leads to rise of totalitarian Germany lead to millions of deaths leads to nuclear power etc.
Posted by: Peter Sean Bradley | June 14, 2004 at 10:46 PM