vol. 59, no. 3 (January), 1993, pp. 544-45          

 

The Great Myths of 1929 and Lessons to be Learned
by Harold Bierman, Jr. 
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991, pp. 202 

With a background in managerial accounting and capital budgeting and inspriation from a 1961 article by Jørgen Pedersen [1], Harold Bierman tells a story substantially at odds with most macroeconomic theories of boom and bust. Although he lists seven great myths about 1929 in the opening pages of this volume, his views on the stock-market crash of that year stand or fall with the "first and most important" one—so identified in the closing pages. It is a myth, according to Bierman, that "Stocks were obviously overpriced" before the crash [p. 14]. At issue here is not the obviousness of the overpricing (obvious when? obvious to whom?) but the notion that there was a general overpricing at all. Closely related is the second-listed alleged myth that "The crash was inevitable." 
        So, why did the market crash? According to the book's major thesis, an effective but ill-conceived war against stock-market speculators was being waged by the Federal Reserve, Congress, and the President. With the market highly leveraged and under siege, any negative news could trigger a self-reinforcing decline [p. 16]. Bierman eventually fills in the blanks with a rhetorical and metaphorical question: "Was the Hatry affair a match thrown on the floor of a forest which had been dried out by the Federal Reserve tight-money policy combined with low margin requriements?" [p. 161]. English financier Clarence Hatry was ruined and disgraced in September of 1929 when some of his loan collateral was revealed to be forged securities. 
        The claim that stocks were not overpriced in the third quarter of 1929 is based upon conventional present-value calculations in which a stock's price-to-earnings ratio varies inversely with the difference between the expected growth rate (g) in earnings and the relevant discount rate (k). A low k-g can justify a high P/E [pp. 43-44]. Alternatively—but more tellingly—restated, easy money and rosy expectations imply stock prices that are no lower than the ones actually observed in the summer of 1929. 
        Bierman's calculations are less than persuasive for two reasons. First, the plausibility of assumed growth and discount rates is a weak justification for the implied price-to-earnings ratio. P/E is very sensitive to growth- and discount-rate assumptions, as acknowledged by Bierman [p. 44], all the more sensitive if it is easy money (low k) that underlies the rosy expectations (high g). Almost-as-plausible assumptions could justify stock prices twice as high as they actually were. Second, the widely held belief that stock prices were too high is largely a reflection of the belief, also widely held, that money was too easy, expectations too rosy. 
        Readers who have learned their interest-rate dynamics from Knut Wicksell and their business-cycle theory from F. A. Hayek will not be satisfied that Bierman has effectively dealt with the question of the bust's inevitability. He picked up the story after the most significant events had already occurred. Although the Federal Reserve's tight-money policy just before the crash is subjected to sustained criticism, its loose-money policy throughout most of the decade is treated as a non-issue. Bierman acknowledges neither a policy-induced discrepancy between the bank rate of interest and the natural rate, as identified by Wicksell, nor the consequent artificial boom involving the misallocation of capital, as illuminated by Hayek. According to Hayek's capital-theoretic account of the cycle, booms driven by credit expansion contain the seeds of their own undoing. It is in this sense that busts are inevitable. Had the interest rate throughout the 1920s been governed by saving and investment without the influence of the Federal Reserve's credit expansion, the interwar period would have been characterized by neither boom nor bust but by sustainable growth. Rather than fault easy money for derailing both the interest rate and stock prices from their natural paths, Bierman sees the high stock prices as natural largely becuse of the low discount. [p. 34]. 
        Most readers will agree with the author that speculation is a healthy aspect of the market process. Contrary to Bierman, however, widespread speculation in the final throes of a credit-induced boom is not a sign of good health and cannot be fully explained in terms of discounted income streams. While debate within the Federal Reserve was colored with the rhetoric of war on speculation, the alternative was not peace with speculation but rather an escalation of the speculative boom. In 1929 the Federal Reserve had a tiger by the tail. Both bulls and bears were speculating on how long it could hold on and just when it would let go. 
        Frequently citing Irving Fisher and sometimes Friedman and Schwartz, Bierman argues that all was well until the Federal Reserve began bungling monetary policy in 1929. Typically, macroeconomists who theorize in terms of capital and interest, e.g., Hayek, believe that things had gone awry long before the crash, while macroeconomists who believe the trouble started in 1929, e.g., Fisher and Friedman, theorize in terms of monetary aggregates and the price level. Bierman's perspective on 1929, then, does not neatly fit into either school of thought. In summary terms, Bierman uses capital accounting methods to arrive at monetarist conclusions. 
        The most engaging parts of the book consist of testimony before Congressional committees by Federal Reserve officials and investment-pool operators as well as speeches by public officials and communiqués between the Federal Reserve Board and the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Adolph Miller of the Board favored selective credit controls aimed at speculators; George Harrison of the New York Federal Reserve Bank favored a general tightening of credit as a means to reduce speculation. Amidst the uncertainty about what the Federal Reserve would actually do, speculation proceeded apace while Harrison tried to convince Miller that there was no mechanism with which to implement selective controls [p. 83]. Adding to the confusion, Roy Young, another Board member unattuned to implementation problems, announced publically that "It seems to me that it would be the [better] part of prudence for all who are lenders to see first that business gets credit at reasonable rates and let the others get what is left" [p.89]. 
        The penultimate chapter on the "Crash of 1987" is short and mostly descriptive. This and the final chapter on "Lessons" contain heavy doses of We Don't Know; Experts Can Be Wrong; and Hindsight Is Better Than Foresight.

                                                                                Roger W. Garrison
                                                                                 Auburn University
Reference 

1. Pedersen, Jørgen. "Some Notes on the Economic Policy of the United States during the Period 1919-1932," in Money, Growth, and Methodology, edited by Hugo Hegeland. Lund, Sweden: CWK Gleerup, 1961, pp. 473-94.