"There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash" - Irving Fisher

On the 24th of October, Black Thursday as it was named, several bankers met in a bid to hold an intervention to the tumbling stock markets. A bit like J.P. Morgan did in 1907. In 1907, J.P. Morgan gathered up New York's leading bankers to his private library to help stop the bank run. When they couldn't come to an agreement he locked them into his library until they eventually agreed on a solution. J.P. Morgan, along with various other well known names such as John D. Rockefeller and George B. Cortelyou agreed to deposit money in the banks to help end the bank run.

In 1907 this tactic among others worked, and the bankers had acted like the modern day lender of last resort. However when Richard Whitney, acting on the behalf of the Wall Street heavy weights who had pooled their resources, tried a similar solution - purchasing shares in U.S. Steel above market price it did not have the desired effect.  Black Thursday led into Black Monday and Black Tuesday.

The fall out of the Wall Street crash brought many casualties. One was the U.S stock markets and economy. Unemployment went from 3.2 % to 24.9% at the peak in 1933. Germany again defaulted on debt which paved the way for Hitler and World War II. Unemployment in other European countries was high. For example in Britain it reached 2.5 million in 1930 up 1.5 times from the year before.

Some economists, argue that the FEDs reaction made the great depression worse than it should have been. Friedman & Schwartz argue that the FED should have acted as a lender of last resort and gave credit to those banks who needed it. That the policies they had in placed should have been properly used. Instead of giving money to those who needed it, the FED took the approach of contracting the money supply.

The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.(Milton Friedman)

Off the back of the Great Depression and Wall Street Crash came new regulations, The Glass-Steagall Act 1933 created deposit insurance and separated commercial and investment banking.  The Securities Act 1933 was also introduced.

It was World War II that was to aid the recovery of the Great Depression. With war comes an increase in government spending and a reduction in unemployment. Whilst it is not exactly a happy ending, it is an ending. Once the war was over the Bretton Woods system was in place with the view to rebuild the global economy. A move which worked, as even though there were still some recessions there wasn't a financial/banking/economic/stock market crash until 1973.