Part one of term paper
The enormous amount of unsecured consumer debt created by this speculation left the stock market essentially off-balance. Many investors, caught up in the race to make a killing, invested their life savings, mortgaged their homes, and cashed in safer investments such as treasury bonds and bank accounts. As the prices continued to rise, some ...

Part two of term paper
... On Thursday, October 24, 1929, the bottom began to fall out. Prices dropped precipitously as more and more investors tried to sell their holdings. By the end of the day, the New York Stock Exchange had lost four billion dollars, and it took exchange clerks until five o'clock AM the next day to clear all the transactions. By the following Monday, the realization of what had happened began to sink in, and a full-blown panic ensued. Thousands of investors -- many of them ordinary working people, not ...