The thali that never changes

thalis with dozens of dishes. Every market fall brings out a familiar spread of explanations—geopolitical tensions, FII selling, disappointing earnings, high valuations—each served with the gravitas of someone who has decoded the universe's deepest mysteries.We could treat such expertise as entertainment rather than investment guidance.

However, I was being far too harsh on the entertainment industry.Andrew Ross Sorkin's new book, titled 1929, is a meticulously researched narrative of the stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression. What struck me most wasn't the drama of the crash itself—though there's plenty of that—but how familiar the debates leading up to it sound today.

The thali of market wisdom, it turns out, has been on the menu for nearly a century.In early 1929, as American stocks soared to unprecedented heights, a public battle erupted between those who thought the market was dangerously overheated and those who believed the good times would roll on forever. Senator Carter Glass, one of the architects of the Federal Reserve, thundered against "stock speculation" and demanded that Charles Mitchell, the chairman of National City Bank (the forerunner to Citigroup), be disciplined for encouraging it.Paul Warburg, a respected banker who had helped create the Fed, warned about "orgies of unrestrained speculation" and predicted disaster.The bulls hit back with their own thali.

A Princeton economist accused Glass and his allies of "fanatical passions and provincial ignorance" and defended Wall Street as an "innocent community". A Virginia banker called on Glass to resign instead.Alexander Noyes, the financial editor of The New York Times, accused Warburg of "sandbagging American prosperity." Everyone had