If the dream of wealth drove the market upwards, the nightmare fear of insolvency drove it down. In the droll discussion of the business meeting to do no-business, or of the rites of leading figures making theatrical interventions to support the market there is a sense of the author as anthropologist, all economic activity is above all human interaction and as such about confidence, hopes and fears. The sense that Galbraith describes in those times that growth was inevitable and the that the rollercoaster could only ever climb higher, despite a structure built of insolvent companies, an inadequate customer base and a certain amount of sharp if not technically illegal practice, which seemed for some odd reason curiously familiar. Galbraith starts with the enormous optimism of the 1920s in the USA and runs through the excitement in investment opportunities from Florida land speculation to leverage investment trusts and loans to support investment by margin purchase in the stock market.
The very narrowness and interest in precise details of Galbraith's book allows the reader to draw their own comparisons with our own times and develop a sense of general patterns and tendencies whether of regulatory bodies to become over time branches of the industries they are meant to regulate or how unequal income distribution makes the whole economy weak and vulnerable. I read Lords of Finance which covers, broadly speaking, the same topic, but that was one of those fashionably long books that shows the reader plenty of trees, but leaves no sense of the shape of the forest. The strength of this book is its sharp focus.
To regard the people of any time as particularly obtuse seems vaguely improper, and it also establishes a precedent which members of this generation might regret. He was also awarded the Order of Canada in 1997, and in 2001, the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award, for strengthening ties between India and the USA. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom twice: one in 1946 from President Truman, and another in 2000 from President Clinton. He served as US Ambassador to India under John F. He was active in politics, serving in the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson. He taught at Harvard University for many years. Among his most famous works was his economics trilogy: American Capitalism (1952), The Affluent Society (1958) & The New Industrial State (1967). A prolific author, he produced four dozen books & over a 1000 articles on many subjects. His books on economic topics were bestsellers in the 1950s and 1960s. He was a Keynesian and an institutionalist, a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism and democratic socialism. John Kenneth Galbraith was a Canadian-American economist.
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