Beyond the Personalities: Rethinking 1929

Most financial crises are built, not born. In this revitalized format of the Bedrosian Book Club, we discuss 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation by Andrew Ross Sorkin, using it as a lens to examine excess, regulation, and the modern blueprint for the cult of personality. The book's focus on larger-than-life financiers prompts a broader question: how much do these narratives obscure the underlying mechanisms that made the system fragile? The conversation explores how storytelling shapes public understanding of crises and the policy responses that follow. In this episode: How personality-driven narratives can obscure systemic risk What the 1929 crash reveals about leverage, speculation, and market fragility Why regulatory reforms often fall short of structural change Parallels between the 1920s and today's financial landscape The challenge of balancing deregulation, innovation, and consumer protection Host: Richard K. Green Director, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate Guests: Liz Falletta Professor (Teaching) USC Sol Price School of Public Policy Aubrey Hicks Client Relations and Development Manager UCLA CRESST (National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, & Student Testing)