The Money Breaks First

On 4 November 1929, Samuel Insull sat in a box at Chicago's new Civic Opera House. He controlled eighty-five utility companies across thirty-odd states, an empire valued near $4 billion, sold to Midwestern schoolteachers as safe as the sunrise. The machine never missed a beat.

Electricity output roughly tripled over the decade, and in 1932 it still ran above the 1929 level across several utility systems. Insull's structure entered receivership in April 1932 anyway, and roughly 600,000 shareholders were wiped out.

That is what a bubble looks like. The technology works, demand is not the problem, the capital structure is. Where the obligation is recorded, who has to change their mind, and what happens when they do, is what the aftermath looks like.