That it was so obviously a bubble was apparent not simply from the fact that stock prices were now rising out of all proportion to the rise in corporate earnings—for while stock values were doubling, profits maintained their steady advance of 10 percent per year. The market displayed every classic symptom of a mania: the progressive narrowing in the number of stocks going up, the nationwide fascination with the activities of Wall Street, the faddish invocations of a new era, the suspension of every conventional standard of financial rationality, and the rabble enlistment of an army of amateur
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