[Moonman62]

Hoover popped the stock market because of the almost universal hatred and jealousy of speculators, even though they only made up a small part of the market. The stock market did well in the late 1920's because the economy was doing so well. It wasn't a bubble. Growth was excellent, unemployment was below 2%, and inflation was non-existent. (Try to explain that to anybody at the Federal Reserve.)

Since taxi drivers and garbage collectors were making money on investments, Hoover made several threats that he was going to do something about the stock market, but they were ignored. Finally Hoover took real action. He directed the Federal Reserve to raise margin rates so high that nobody would borrow. This caused the big money investors to sell their stocks, and short some more, and the crash began. Most of the speculators were long gone. Instead, everbody would be punished, the real investors, and all the productive people in the economy.

[nicollo]

One of the biggest plays in late Twenties stock market was by Billy Durant. By ‘28 he controlled a pool with over a billion dollars in stocks. (By April of ‘29 he was publicly excoriating the Federal Reserve for its tightening of the money supply). He saw a downturn coming and smelled opportunity. Sometime over the summer of ‘29, he moved out of the market at huge gains. Thinking the worst was over, he went back in in 1930. 1932 wiped him out.

Meanwhile, the luxury division of the company he founded back in 1908, GM, was putting out the most magnificent American automobile ever, the Cadillac V16. They first arrived in early 1930, and sold pretty well, all things considered, through the decade. Too bad Billy couldn't much afford one after the Fed's monetary gaming and a Republican Congress that further torched the economy with the tariff.