The 80th anniversary of the Great Crash is upon us. This touches a nerve because we seemed to be looking into the same bottomless pit only a year ago. The chain of events, leading from a dramatic collapse in stock prices on Wall Street, beginning in late October 1929, to a Great Depression that engulfed the world economy for years, has suddenly leapt off the pages of the history books with an entirely fresh verisimilitude. Pessimists have asked, what is to stop it all happening again? Optimists have asked, what can we learn to stop it from doing so?
“大崩潰”(Great Crash)80周年紀念日剛剛過去。這觸動了人們的神經，因為就在一年前我們似乎還面臨著同樣的無底深淵。從1929年10月底華爾街股市崩盤開始，到籠罩全球經濟多年的“大蕭條”(Great Depression)，一系列事件突然從歷史書籍中躍入現實，活靈活現地出現在我們眼前。悲觀主義者問，怎么做才能讓這一切不再發生？樂觀主義者則問，我們從中能夠吸取哪些教訓，以防止一切重演？