One charlatan opens an account with a broker, gives a few orders for purchase and sale, and, if the market turns against him, brings suit on the ground that a selling order has been erroneously executing as a buying order or vice versa.... A few on the outer fringe of finance make a living out of this racket. One notorious swindler had successive suits against many brokerage houses. They were brought by different attorneys, some in his own name and some in the names of relatives... -from "Broker and Customer in Court" The stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression did not occur in a vacuum: their roots lie in economic events that occurred over the previous ten years. This book performs a financial autopsy on the "speculative decade" from 1919 to 1929, exploring the ruinous aftermath of World War I-in which war debts were contested and battles over reparations set the stage for a difficult international monetary situation-as well as the natural waxing and waning of economic cycles and the processes and procedures of stock exchanges that contributed to disaster. Written by a lawyer and emphasizing a legal perspective on the workings of a complex economy, this classic work of high finance offers a unique panorama on an important era of American history that is often overlooked. BARNIE F. WINKELMAN (b. 1894) also wrote Modern Chess (1931) and John D Rockefeller (1937), among other books.