The 1920s in America: Boom & Bust

In today’s episode we discuss the booming economic times of the 1920s when new inventions like cars, radios and electrification led to massive improvements in people lives. The obsession with stocks led to the dizzying heights of the late 1920s and the Wall Street Crash.

Warning: This podcast does not constitute financial or tax advice.  Please contact a financial advisor or tax advisor to discuss your own individual circumstances, taking into account your needs and objectives, knowledge and experience and financial situation.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Cash Lads. My name is Paul Malloy from BoxcoverTax.ie and this is Marcus Doyle from Clear Financial. We're here to take the mystery out of money and finance with some history, some stories, and plenty of humor too. Hello, Marcus. How are you getting on today? Not bad, Paul. Yourself. Good for good good thanks. Today, Marcus, we are going back in time to the roaring twenties. When you were alive. When I yeah, when I was first born, yeah. When I was a nipper. Yeah, when I was a nipper. Um I could see you with one of those little caps on in your little my voice might sound youthful, folks, but I'm actually 104. And uh looking well, Paul, to be fair. Not bad. But post post World War One, what after World War One, the uh Europe was devastated, completely devastated uh from the conflict. And uh Germany had been hit with a reparations bill, which is a bill for paying for the costs of the war, the damage they'd inflicted. Um yeah, that Germany got screwed over basically. They did. Do you know what Germany did to France in 1870 when they beat them? They gave them a big reparations bill. So the the Germans had a bit of form, and the French were in a very in a mood for revenge, but Germany and and Britain had borrowed hugely from America during the war. And the the the Germans were were very, very low in cash. So what America did was in the early 20s, it gave money to Germany. Germany used that money to pay the French and the British for the reparations, and the British and the French gave it back to America to repay their loans. But that virtuous circle of money, which sounds kind of ridiculous, like it's all a big thing. You're paying Peter to pay Paul. There's money, money coming in, and so it creates activity. And American business needed Europe to buy things because American business had done very well during World War I, and now suddenly, if the loans were cut off completely, the they'd stop buying things, and you'd have a recession in America. So that's one of the reasons they did it. But the the 20s, uh, which is our our focus today, really were a a time of you know, incredible productivity, incredible new products that change lives. I mean, that I suppose the one that's probably most common is the the automobile or a vehicle, uh depending on what part of the country you're from. So cars, you know, people didn't have cars before that. They were, you know, only for the likes of yourself, Mark Marcus, the the uber wealthy. So um the average Schmo uh you know couldn't uh you just had your horse and cart back and had had a horse and cart. And um, I mean I suppose you know Ford's Henry Ford's great ability was to, you know, a bit like China, so we as we've spoken about in recent episodes, uh he had the ability to make a car cheap. Because they were his assembly line, which transformed production, which transformed all the industries took it then. Wasn't just the Irish American, just yeah, it wasn't just it wasn't just cars.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Uh and it was didn't have a factory down in Limerick for a while, Ford, to go bring it back to Ireland. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

I there was I can't remember, maybe it wasn't Limerick, but I remember they did No, we did we did have some production here, but again, that would have been when wages were were lower here, you know. And um but Ford paid his his workers quite well. Uh and one of the reasons he paid them well is he wanted them to buy a car. Now back then That's the famous line, you can have it in any colour if the colour is black. As long as it's black. Um, but you know, one of the things that that one of the, I suppose, very, very important changes occurred this time was buying on credit. So previously, if you wanted to buy a car, you needed all the money up front. And that was an awful lot for the average person to have to pay on their wage, it wasn't possible. Makes sense prudently, uh, we're not giving it to someone we're not sure if they're if they're gonna have a wage or you know we'll lend it to you over five years. Could you make those payments? You know, the person's thinking, I don't think I could do that. So so this kind of buying on credit, and it wasn't just cars, it it expanded to other things. Um was was very, very important. We had you know, we had telephones for the first time, we had radios, which made a huge difference in people's lives. They connected people, absolutely, you know. Um we had uh I was gonna say Hoovers, but you corrected me before not. Hoover's the brand's vacuum cleaner be correct. Vacuum cleaner is correct. So we had vacuum cleaners, we had the cinema, um, and you know, life was pretty, particularly in America. Now Europe was still recovering from World War One. That took that took quite a lot of time to rebuild their economies. But I mean America wasn't, although America lost a lot of soldiers, clearly a lot of young men in in the work. They'd know physical damage, like no physical damage, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So um, you know, electricity. I mean, the difference the difference that that made. I mean, I remember being being down the Guelthip one night, and we were sneaking out after hours, it was about you know half twelve, one o'clock, and it was just black. There was just no light anywhere. There was just kind of one far light off, you know. So before electricity, that's what life would have been like. Yeah, candles and paraffin lamps. So okay, you might have some. I always hear our parents talk about the old paraffin lamp. You might have some light, uh whale oil. That's what we used actually. So that was actually the whales were were were massively, massively hunted back then, you know, until they realized until they realize hang on, this thing called uh oil uh is uh you know, they got a lot of it in the Middle East. Um, so all these changes, we I mean, this was the time that gave us, you know, not just Ford, but General Motors, you know, still with us, uh, General Electric, still with us, DuPont, you know, US Steel, all these really, really big companies came along and people got very, very excited about the stock market. First, really for the first time, because prior to that, it just wasn't within there's kind of a rich person. It was a rich person's game. It's a rich person's game. So so we had all these changes bubbling um in the 1920s because companies were making lots of money. Uh these companies were giving good dividends because they were making good money, they were paying them out to their their dividends. These days, companies probably maybe hold back some of that you know m money to to reinvest, exactly. Um, or you know, manage your bonuses. Um, productivity was rising, economic growth was blasting away um in the States, and the stock market was going was going up. And I remember obviously about 20 years ago now, I was in uh I was in Boston at the time at the Red Sox, who had been down for a while, the Bostoners were really bombing. And you know, the uh uh they were playing their hated rivals, the Yankees in the semifinals, and every newspaper you looked at, you know, e not just the sports section, but even some women's section would be talking about, you know, I'm so I used to hate baseball, now we love it, like you know, so it just took over. This is what happened in America, and it's hard to convey. Um so it became the hot topic in America at the time. It's all people want to talk about, and um the ordinary person was buying some shares and they were making money, and they were suddenly feeling richer and more optimistic about life, and uh there was just incredible excitement.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

And then it it kind of grew, then oh, my neighbor did it, I better do it. That kind of natural kind of growth. There definitely would have been a bit of that. Because people were probably boasting about it, so then everyone else got on board. I know that it's it's like with us with the oh, the next big investment, oh, we all have to invest in this.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

So this, I mean, this it kind of like initially people were, you know, people didn't have a huge amount of money back then. Um, so it would have been a small amount of money, you know, five dollars here, ten dollars there. Um and it would have been a lot back then, to be fair. It would have been a lot back then, yeah. It would have been and wages are nothing like that they are today. Um, but they were still rising quite a lot. So it was that kind of feel-good uh feel-good factor. Now, one thing that wasn't feeling very good was uh prohibition. So uh prohibition had come in.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

No alcohol, except no private places where people go used to go.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

And if you want to understand prohibition, folks, check out the Simpsons episode on prohibition, it'll tell you all you need to know. It's a very, very good description. They even have people that you know wearing clothes of that time, you know, and uh there was uh logic behind prohibition initially because um seemingly you if you were walking down the street in America at that time, any street in any state or any town, there were men and women, but probably mostly men, absolutely wasted on liquor, whiskey, for uh vodka, uh all that kind of stuff, really heavy stuff, you know, heavily, heavily drunk in the middle of the day. And there was just this kind of temperance movement, just it just took over. And they actually they didn't just put in a law, they changed the constitution. Yeah, which is big. They changed the const and that's no small thing. Um, so you know, obviously the the the mafia uh found that uh they were able to get some hooch and uh demand was still strong. So um so other other other other than that, and I suppose some of these famous speakeasies where you'd you know there'd be a you know a bar they'd have kind of a very kind of you know quiet area like that because obviously if the cops were walking by they'd see it.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

So um I kind of a knock on a door, a hatch opens and there's a code to get in all that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

I find it hard to believe the cops didn't know where to say the cops were in there when they were off duty and some kickbacks, yeah, yeah, definitely. But it that that that that's that is the that is the the the background uh as well. So people couldn't get drunk, but they could get drunk on stocks. And uh we're gonna do a bit of numbers here, and I'm thinking of my my my mother uh Elma, um don't worry about the the numbers here, Mom. I'll help out later on. Um if you wanted to buy a stock, let's say it costs a thousand euros and it goes up by ten percent, then you've made a hundred dollars. Um you've made yeah, so now you instead of a thousand, now you have 1100, which is good. But if it you could borrow instead of just buying stocks worth a thousand, if you could borrow another nine thousand, then you had ten thousand to invest, and ten percent of ten thousand was um eleven thousand. So now you'd made all your money back, but you know, instead of making a hundred, now you've made a thousand because you repay the loan as well. So this is what starts that starts to happen, and it has it's it's it's always where finance goes too far. You know, it starts with borrowing and it sounds innocent at the time, you know. It's like people want to invest more, it's going to help the stock market, it'll help us fund, you know, they come up with all this kind of stuff, but the the uh everything is fine as raw as long as uh stocks don't go down, because if you're ten thousand, if it goes minus ten, then you owe a thousand and you don't have that kind of money, similar to the property crash that you can borrow from the property, but if the property goes down, then you're in trouble because you're negative equity. But initially it wasn't that big a problem because stocks were only going up. You know, there they're there i it it was just a time when when the the gradual increase was just up and up and up. And um JFK's father, Joe Kennedy, he did this, I think he did it on at least two occasions, where he bought a company that really wasn't anything special at all. And he would pay Time magazine to put him because he was well known at the time, pay put him on the front of Time Magazine, put his face on the front on the front of Time magazine, or you know, feature uh a featured article about him. He would talk about this new stock that he bought. He was very respected. People thought, well, Joe Kennedy's in there. I want to get it.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Must be good, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

So all these guys jump in, the ordinary person jump in, or you know, traders, they jump in. He sells them his shares. He sells all of the shares at a much higher price. Pump it up. So he's by his presence, he has increased the price of the shares, people jump in, he sells all, he makes loads of money, they lose loads of money because the stock has has tumbled. Like our infamous Aircom.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Yeah. Do you do do you remember? I remember the time big, but I I got it. The whole aspect of government marketing, it you can take a piece of our one of our utilities. But to be honest, well, you know, you work in the industry, obviously, a financial advisor. Certain people can do stocks, but not every that's why I'm with this this this um 1920s, everyone obviously jumped in the butt, but obviously there wasn't as much financial knowledge back then. No, but certain people can do stocks and they can do it, but uh for other or for most of my clients say, look, put it into this fund, there's an investment manager doing it for you, they know what they're at. So some uh I I got a good many clients who do have stock stocks and they manage them themselves, but they they know what they're doing, they have knowledge of it. But I think the ordinary Joe Sub doesn't know enough about it, they just buy their the famous ones, and then like is there's even people these days influenced like Trump seems to be influencing them Elon Musk, he will and he probably has loads of shares in these companies, and that's why he's doing it.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Well, I mean, you know, it is there is nothing more risky than making a single investment because yes, it can go well, but it can also go bad. So you think the um the I think it was um I think it was BMW, the emissions crisis. They fiddled with the emissions. They they kind of had had had manufactured these cars and then they realized it was a problem with the emissions, and they fiddled with the paperwork. Hard to believe.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

I remember I yeah, I was I think because well I was I my mind was I used to have a Volkswagen and they it could detect what has been tested and it changed the um engine cycle, wasn't that it?

SPEAKER_00 13:53

This was a serious, serious scandal. Uh this was a company that was making tons of money and had always been a very, very good investment. Now, if you had invested in them directly, you know, uh you were losing serious money. I think it's got it lost over half its share price, and it took it took a very, very long time.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

So all those companies, it was mostly the German companies. I think well, all the companies car companies try to put they had to put a chunk of money aside to do all the the children stuff.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

It wasn't just that company, it was all German companies because they all got targeted the same brush. So, you know, that is a thing about investment, you know, it mightn't be sexy, but if you can get three or four percent a year in a fund that's well diversified, that's not a bad idea at all. And it's that single investment, you know. I mean, look, some people have have done very, very well out of gold. Um, but I mean there's there's there's reasons to think gold could go down someday.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

There's things that will cause so volatile and so because I think people you're you're saying they'll see one year, geez, it was up 30%. I'll got but then an extra could be down 30%.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

It no so volatile it it is volatile, and you know, and that's why I think diversification is um it might seem a little bit boring, but you know, we all know the concept of don't have all your apples in one basket. Like we're told that as kids, like you know, and it's it's if if if they're all in one basket and the basket gets nicked, you've got nothing. You know, and it's one of the things that caused, for example, the the Dutch East India Company to come together because these kind of Dutch ships were going to sailing all around Africa to Indonesia. If they didn't come back, you lost all your money. Total disaster. Which could happen, storms, absolutely, you know, particularly around South Africa, or other other, you know, other fleets, would you know the the English or the Spanish, yeah, Portuguese pirates? Pirates, absolutely. Britain, one of Britain's first multinational sectors was uh piracy, believe it or not. Uh Spanish gold. They're still at it. Well, well, well, they they certainly were at it at the time. There's no question and actually had the Queen Elizabeth uh 100% supported. So uh the first Elizabeth first. But yeah, so so that whole idea, you know, what the Dutch did was said, let's get everyone together, let's get all the ships together. And so if there's a hundred go out and seven don't don't come back, well we still got 93.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

So um that's kind of that's kind of the idea, but I think you did hit on something earlier when you said it, Markets, the lack of financial knowledge, the lack of experience, you know, when a when a country experiences a boom for the first time, and we wouldn't have property back in the the 90s and noughties, there is no frame of reference in terms of what what if people what if it goes wrong?

SPEAKER_01 16:35

Yeah, the problem is they've so much money like Ireland or the culture, they want to spend it on stuff, so it's like property shares.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

The next thing that we had back then was were what were known as investment trusts. So I set up an investment trust and I tell you I'm going to invest in all these type things, it'll be diversified, it's gonna make loads of money. It's not you're not gonna be stuck in one stock because people would have heard stories about one or two stocks going to the wall. Yeah, and that would have made people a bit nervous. So the trust sounded good initially. Um, so people put their money in, the trust invested, and then the trust, just like the borrowing on margin, thinks, what if we borrowed some money? So these trusts started borrowing money, and not only were they borrowing buying other shares and things like that, they started borrowing buying trusts, other trusts. Oh god, so the trust also had trusts also had loans in it as well. And people didn't know who owned what. And you know, there's huge echoes of 2008 with all the um mortgage-backed securities that got sliced and diced and put into what were known as CDOs. They were trying to repeat that well, obviously just haven't repeated. That was a precursor of it. There was no SEC, no securities and exchange commission to to regulate um activity, and things just went up and up and up. And then sometime, I think it was in the summer of 2000 uh sorry, of 1929, summer to late, late, late summer, the governments um were concerned. Uh Herbert Hoover was the president at that time. Uh they were concerned about the frottiness of the stock market. They said, you know, this this kind of getting out of hand, like you know, it's grown, it's it's it's rising just too fast. Let's let's calm things down and we'll just we'll raise interest rates. Just to just to cool the jets a bit. And very shortly it led to a total and complete panic. And as the shares went down, that's when the borrowing really started to kick in. Because then the people they'd borrowed from, the the the dealers or you know, the the people who'd who'd taken their who'd given them the loans, they wanted their money back. You know? So this this and this is the kind of stuff that led to people being ruined. Uh people started, um, it's there's no doubt about it, people started jumping out of buildings. Yeah, that was the famous thing to stockbrokers and all that were jumping out. It's because they were ruined, and because there was no way back. And then about a year later, as the American business, the economy started to really crunch, credit just started to disappear, and people started to, you know, people started getting laid off in in big numbers. And uh, Smooth Holy, uh, which was uh an act of the US uh Congress, decided to um put tariffs on especially European providers. And uh of course the Europeans responded in kind, and it just went on and on and on and so America couldn't then sell to Europe without big costs, just so and this is where we get six million unemployed people in Germany, and this is how this is how you get Adolf Hitler. It only happens in extreme times. Uh on that cheery note, folks, uh we will we shall leave it today. Hope you enjoyed today's episode and uh we'll see you uh we'll see you next time. Talk to you soon.