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The money supply in the United States leveled off by the end of 1928, and remained more or less constant from then on. This ending of the massive credit expansion boom made a recession inevitable, and sure enough, the American economy began to turn down in July 1929. Feverish attempts to keep the stock market boom going, however, managed to boost stock prices while the economic fundamentals were turning sour, leading to the famous stock market crash of October 24.
This crash was an event for which Herbert Hoover was ready. For a decade, Herbert Hoover had urged that the United States break its age-old policy of not intervening in cyclical recessions. During the postwar 1920-1921 recession, Hoover, as secretary of commerce, had unsuccessfully urged President Harding to intervene massively in the recession, to "do something" to cure the depression, in particular to expand credit and to engage in a massive public-works program. Although the United States got out of the recession on its own, without massive intervention, Hoover vowed that next time it would be different. In late 1928, after he was elected president, Hoover presented a public works scheme, the "Hoover Plan" for "permanent prosperity...
... When the stock market crash came in October 1929, therefore, President Hoover was ready for massive intervention to attempt to raise wage rates, expand credit, and embark on public works.
... The major opponent of this new statist dogma was Secretary o the Treasury Mellon, who, though one of the leaders in pushing the boom, now at least saw the importance of liquidating the malinvestments, inflated costs, prices, and wage rates of the inflationary boom. Mellon, indeed, correctly cited the successful application of such a laissez-faire policy in previous recessions and crises. But Hoover overrode Mellon, with the support of Treasury Undersecretary Ogden Mills.
If Hoover stood ready to impose an expansionist and interventionist New Deal, Morgan man George L. Harrison, head of the New York Fed and major power in the Federal Reserve, was all the more ready to inflate. During the week of the crash, the last week of October, the Fed doubled its holdings of government securities, adding $150 million to bank reserves, as well as discounting $200 million more for member banks. The idea was to prevent liquidation of the bloated stock market, and to permit the New York City banks to take over the loans to stockbrokers that the nonbank lenders were liquidating. As a result, member banks of the Federal Reserve expanded their deposits by $1.8 billion-a phenomenal monetary expansion of nearly 10 percent in one week! Of this increase, $1.6 billion were increased deposits of the New York City banks. In addition, Harrison drove down interest rates, lowering its discount rates to banks from 6 percent to 4.5 percent in a few weeks...
... By mid-November, the great stock break was over, and the market, artificially buoyed and stimulated by expanding credit, began to move upward again.
