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A significant private finance sector present in the 1920s in the US did nothing to prevent the great depression, where millions of people starved.

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And we passed a bunch of regulations afterwards which reduced the possibility of that happening again.

Regulations which, I believe, have largely been repealed.

The future looks "bright" and full of "hope".

It's all a heck of a lot richer story than that. If she's not just a curse word by now, Amity Schlae's (sp?) book on the Depression isn't bad at all.

I dunno; all the bright-line false alternative stuff doesn't work. Economic history is still interesting.

I believe it turns out that the regulation that got repealed probably would not have mattered much other than possibly setting up transparent exchanges for derivatives, and that seem speculative as well. YMMV, IMO, all that.

A good argument can be made that it's the 1914 takeover of money creation by the government that led do the financial collapse in 1930.

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