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“The Great Crash of October 1929 marked a fundamental break in U.S. history, a drastic change in basic attitudes and institutions that define the roles of citizen and state. . . [T]he public mind was affected as much as the economy, with the people turning to the government for security. . . “The terror of the Great Crash has been the failure to explain it. People were left with the feeling that massive economic contractions could occur at any moment, without warning, without cause. That fear has been exploited ever since as the major justification for virtually unlimited federal intervention in economic affairs.”
-Source: Alan Reynolds, economist, “Fifty Years Later: What Do We Know About the Great Crash?” National Review, 1979