'29 Factors Seen in Stock Dip: JFK's Memory
WHAT WORRIES some Washington experts about the stock market is that certain basic factors which led to the 1929 crash are present today. Prior to the 1929 crash, the United States had pumped several billion dollars into Western Europe in the form of bond issues and bank credits, which in turn financed U. S. exports. These exports were not actually paid for by Europe but by the American investors who purchased foreign bonds. It was largely a synthetic form of foreign trade.</br></br>And when the financial world began to question this inflated system of foreign trade, the whole structure came tumbling down in the 1929 crash. Calvin Coolidge, who presided over the post-wrar period of ÛÏnormalcy,Û periodically bolstered the stock market with expressions of presidential confidence. But in 1929, as Herbert Hoover entered the White House, it could be bolstered no longer.</br></br>Likewise today the United States has been financing exports through foreign aid. This time not the banks and the bond houses have put up the money, but rather the American taxpayers through the United States Government. But the effect has been the same. U. S. exports abroad have been synthetic. They are not paid for by for-</br></br>Meanwhile, European factories have become modernized and efficient. American labor has helped to price U. S. goods out of the market. The whole structure of foreign trade is in real danger of being deflated. And just as Coolidge presided over post-World War I nor-maly, President Eisenhower for eight years issued complacent statements about post-World War n prosperity.</br></br>. John F. Kennedy entered the White House at a postwar II period corresponding .to that of Hoover, after eight years of complacency plus eight years of inflated exports. Û¢