Speculative bubbles have a way of leaving in their wake dozens of discredited economic writers, whose careers after the crash are forever haunted by the enthusiastic pronouncements they made while prices still rose. As John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in his history of the Wall Street crash, academics in the run-up to disaster praised the stockbrokers of their day for shaking off the “heavy armor of tradition” and adopting “vision for the future and boundless hope and optimism.” In June 1929, financier Bernard Baruch explained the rapid rise in stock prices by insisting it reflected a sober appraisal of economic fortunes: “The economic condition of the world seems on the verge of a great forward movement.” As the NYSE soared, one Princeton economist saw fit to comment that stocks were “not at present overvalued.” And in mid-October 1929, Irving Fisher of Yale made one of the most infamous predictions in the history of forecasting: “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” READ MORE