Gatsby, Galbraith and the Myth of Coolidge’s Crash

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- What’s next after the Oscars? MoreGatsby, of course. “The Great Gatsby,” featuring LeonardoDiCaprio and coming in May, will be the fourth, or by somecounts the fifth or sixth, movie version of F. ScottFitzgerald’s novel about the illusion created by false wealth inthe 1920s.

The corollary to the “The Great Gatsby” in the literatureof economics is another old “great,” “The Great Crash 1929,” bythe economist John Kenneth Galbraith. Galbraith’s narrative,like Fitzgerald’s, is subtle, conjuring complex characters. Yetthe effect of both books is the same: to display the 1920s as adecade full of false numbers and false people, reckless pilotswho caused an economic wreck so catastrophic it necessitated 10years of Depression.