Hello and welcome to Conflicted, the history podcast where we talk about the struggles that

shaped us, the tough questions that they pose, and why we should care about any of it.

Conflicted is a member of the Evergreen Podcast Network. And as always, I'm your host, Zach

Cornwell. You are listening to the third and final episode of a limited series on the

stock market crash of 1929.

Now it goes without saying, if you haven't listened to parts one and two, you're going

to want to check those out first.

In those first two installments, we laid the groundwork for a lot of narrative threads that

are going to resolve in this final episode.

And without that context, this episode might make sense, but it won't make you

feel anything. But before we trip the disaster switch and watch this economic nightmare finally

come to a head, let's take a second to quickly remind ourselves what happened over the course

of the series thus far, so we can press forward with all that good stuff top of mind. Way back in

part one, we popped the cork on the

Roaring 20s and learned how Americans became so seduced by the stock market in the first place.

As is often the case, one man's war is another man's windfall, and so it was with World War I.

The United States of America got very, very rich, selling supplies and lending money to

its friends across the Atlantic. By the time it was all over in 1918, the U.S. was swimming

like Scrooge McDuck in an ocean of gold. And that newfound wealth became a springboard

for a new era of economic prosperity in the States. London was officially old news.

Wall Street was where the party was at.

Now, average Americans had dabbled in investing with liberty bonds during the Great War,

...