A closer look
While everyone in the Roaring Twenties thought the stock market was a magical, infinite-money machine, financial journalist Alexander Noyes was busy loudly calling BS. Noyes looked at the 'call money' markets and noticed that banks were loaning absurd amounts of debt to absolute idiots just to buy more stocks. He accurately predicted that this exact leverage loop would inevitably snap and obliterate the economy. Naturally, everyone ignored him until October 1929, when his cynical warnings suddenly became a terrifying reality.
