... began before the Great Crash ... the Great Crash was when the onset of economic decline burst into the national consciousness, not when it began.

The importance of the car is not so much land speculation but rather the Good Roads movement. Paving roads on general obligation bonds is a stimulus when it occurs, but has contractionary impacts when the paving has been completed and the bonds are being paid back. With total government spending on goods and services dropping from at least 1927 on, part of the 1920's growth engine was reversed.

And residential construction was another part, but it too was playing out by the late 1920's.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.