Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway. So, Tracy, we're
Speaker 1: in the middle of our series, our series about episodes
Speaker 1: about bubbles, and of course last week we had the
Speaker 1: awesome one about the history of stock market bubbles, and
Speaker 1: now it's time to talk about some bubbles that aren't
Speaker 1: directly maybe not as familiar to people. Oh okay, well,
Speaker 1: I remember doing the catfish farming bubble, so I'm excited
Speaker 1: about what this one could be, right, Like, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: So obviously people know about like the Internet bubble and
Speaker 1: a few um you know, maybe they think about the
Speaker 1: tulip bubble, which will also be talking about in the
Speaker 1: later episode. But as you pointed out, you know, several
Speaker 1: weeks ago we talked about the bubble and catfish. It's
Speaker 1: a good reminder that bubbles are all over the place
Speaker 1: everywhere throughout history, and not typically in the sort of
Speaker 1: major areas that we think of. Yeah, and uh, I'd
Speaker 1: like the fact that we're actually doing this one because
Speaker 1: it follows on from the stock market bubble one that
Speaker 1: we did last week quite nicely. It's something that actually
Speaker 1: happened I think in the nineteen twenties before everyone got
Speaker 1: really into stocks. But people always talk about the stock
Speaker 1: market bubble of the nineteen twenties. They kind of forgot
Speaker 1: about this one, right exactly, So you're hinting at what
Speaker 1: it is. So it's last week. We talked a lot
Speaker 1: about the stock market bubble of nine, but a few
Speaker 1: years earlier in that decade, in the twenties, there was
Speaker 1: an extraordinary, fascinating bubble in Florida real estate. And of
Speaker 1: course Florida has had numerous booms and busts throughout the years.
Speaker 1: That's sort of part of what makes Florida Florida, including
Speaker 1: recently in the financial crisis, Florida got built up and
Speaker 1: then hit really hard. But this is definitely one of
Speaker 1: my favorite bubbles, and uh, you know, I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of lessons for people even still today and
Speaker 1: analyzing how this built up and how it eventually collapsed.
Speaker 1: We're going to have to rank our favorite bubbles on
Speaker 1: a one to ten basis. I think after we finished
Speaker 1: that'll be let's do that at the end of the series.
Speaker 1: Every al Right, Well, I'm looking forward to this one
Speaker 1: because I think we have a really good guest for
Speaker 1: it as well. Right, Joe, I'm very excited about our
Speaker 1: guest today. Today we're going to be talking to are
Speaker 1: A Moore Parks. She's a historian, she's an author, she's
Speaker 1: a Florida preservationist, basically the perfect person. She knows Florida,
Speaker 1: probably better than just about anywhere else. She knows this
Speaker 1: story and probably the perfect person to glean some insight
Speaker 1: into this extraordinary period of sort of financial and American history. Great,
Speaker 1: let's do it so without further Ado, let's bring in
Speaker 1: Ava Areva. Thank you very much for joining us. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for inviting me. I look forward to it.
Speaker 1: Before we just started with the uh you know, talking
Speaker 1: about this period in Florida history. Tell us how you
Speaker 1: your experience, How did it becoming a sort of preservationist
Speaker 1: and historian with Florida's history? How did that become your
Speaker 1: main interest? Okay, I was a school teacher, teaching history
Speaker 1: at high school and in the faculty room there was
Speaker 1: a notice of six credits toward a master's degree of
Speaker 1: for teachers, and I applaud and was accepted and was
Speaker 1: fortunate the doctor Charlton to both the major Florida historian
Speaker 1: of the day got me interested in doing a master's
Speaker 1: on the earliest community in South Florida, which was Cocoa Grove,
Speaker 1: and that's where it all began. Uh, and I never
Speaker 1: stopped researching after that. Are Joe knows that I like
Speaker 1: to start um at the beginning of things whenever we
Speaker 1: talk about certain historical events in our podcast. So when
Speaker 1: we're talking about this real estate bubble in Florida in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, walk us through how it actually got started. Well,
Speaker 1: we call it the boom in Florida. We don't call
Speaker 1: it the bubble. It's so it's the great boom of
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties. And in many many ways, George America,
Speaker 1: who have done my most recent work, UM moved into
Speaker 1: what was then called the back country and started selling
Speaker 1: lots and what he described as Miami's master suburb. And Uh,
Speaker 1: he had the first sales in n and he expected
Speaker 1: a couple of hundred or five thousand people showed up,
Speaker 1: And in many ways that began the frenzy, I guess
Speaker 1: we should say, of buying up of the back country,
Speaker 1: buying up different areas of South Florida. UM, the Everglades
Speaker 1: started at twenty seventh Avenue, which is hard for people
Speaker 1: to believe today. North of the Miami River, all of
Speaker 1: that had to be reclaimed everglades land, So there was
Speaker 1: a lot of vacant land, and that made Miami area
Speaker 1: the perfect candidate for this bubble or boom as yourn.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned this character, George Merrick, who created this community,
Speaker 1: Coral Gables, and he was a real estate development It
Speaker 1: had way more interest from buyers than he anticipated. What
Speaker 1: was it about his vision? What was it about his
Speaker 1: salesmanship for buying up real estate in South Florida that
Speaker 1: really attracted people at such an intense level. Well, he
Speaker 1: was a master salesman and not an enormous amount of advertising.
Speaker 1: As grandfather Think had become very wealthy manufacturing patent medicine
Speaker 1: called Thinks Magic Oil, and he taught George, and he
Speaker 1: was the one that convinced the Merricks to move to
Speaker 1: South Florida after they were in Duxbury, Massachusetts, after the
Speaker 1: terrible freeze. So they bought this land in the back
Speaker 1: country and actually raised grapefruit, and George sold grapefruit from
Speaker 1: a mule cart as a third jenior old boy. And
Speaker 1: but he dreamed about what he might be able to
Speaker 1: do with us a hundred and sixty acres the original
Speaker 1: hundred sixty acres and his father had bought before moving on.
Speaker 1: Just to touch on something you said, his father was
Speaker 1: a salesman for sort of it was called Fink's Magic Oil.
Speaker 1: That was his grandfather. And so when we think of
Speaker 1: like in the old days, these sort of salesman with
Speaker 1: their you know, now we call him snake oil salesman,
Speaker 1: but the sort of cure all cure all tinctures and
Speaker 1: cure all oils. One can imagine that these sort of
Speaker 1: the salesmanship involved in selling those old oils may have
Speaker 1: passed through to George to uh sell real sale real
Speaker 1: estate in Florida as this sort of paradise. Plus the
Speaker 1: grandfather think was a Methodist circuit riding minister prior to
Speaker 1: becoming a stank old salesman, and his father was a
Speaker 1: Yale educated UH Congregational minister in New England. And the
Speaker 1: terrible freeze where they lost their child. Grandpa Fink had
Speaker 1: been to the brand new community of Miami and told
Speaker 1: Solomon and Althea, George's parents about buying land in the
Speaker 1: back country. And so Solomon Merrick, the educated man, ended
Speaker 1: up buying this wilderness uh and moved out in what
Speaker 1: was called the back country of Coconut Grove. So walk
Speaker 1: us through what was the sales pitch for buying um
Speaker 1: Florida property at that time, Like I imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: they were pitching probably to all types of people, not
Speaker 1: just people who were already in Florida. So what were
Speaker 1: they telling them to entice them to buy into that market. Well,
Speaker 1: um speculation and a lot of open land. Uh. And
Speaker 1: George Merrick I think had as much to do with
Speaker 1: creating the boom nationally because he advertised in national newspapers
Speaker 1: about Coral Gables and was unheard of at the time.
Speaker 1: So people came down not then other um vacant land,
Speaker 1: other homesteads, and the whole area was homestead and Uh.
Speaker 1: That tells you how vacant, I mean, how unpopulated South
Speaker 1: Blarida was. And so other owners of these hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty acre homesteads began to also develop them into subdivisions
Speaker 1: with romantic names, and they too began to advertise in
Speaker 1: the papers. I find it interesting you're talking about Merrick's
Speaker 1: father being a minister, because Merrick himself while he was
Speaker 1: selling property. And this is something that I learned recently.
Speaker 1: He recruited to help him sell property. William Jennings Bryan
Speaker 1: one of the great orators of the era. He's famous,
Speaker 1: of course her in for President. He's famous for his
Speaker 1: Cross of Gold speech, for his role in the Scopes
Speaker 1: Monkey trial, himself religious minister, and so there seems to
Speaker 1: be the sort of crossover between the salesmanship involved in
Speaker 1: selling property as well as the sort of salesmanship involved
Speaker 1: in UH preaching. So I agree with that a dent.
Speaker 1: And I think that Merrick again was a genius when
Speaker 1: it came to marketing, and I think he learned a
Speaker 1: lot of it from Grandpa Fink and his father UH.
Speaker 1: And then hiring William Jennings Bryant was just unheard of
Speaker 1: at the time. So Jenny's blind became one of his
Speaker 1: major salesmen to selling coral gables, both locally and nationally.
Speaker 1: So in addition to these big name salesman like William
Speaker 1: Jennings Bryan, you also had this network of young men
Speaker 1: called binder boys, and they would go out and try
Speaker 1: to get people to put down payments on houses. Right.
Speaker 1: They would sell quote binders, which were laid down payments
Speaker 1: and for a certain price. So you would get a
Speaker 1: binder on a piece of land and you would pay
Speaker 1: for it later. And they made a lot of money
Speaker 1: doing that, and unfortunately a lot of them that was
Speaker 1: a lot of that. The binders helped create the fall
Speaker 1: or the end of the boom because people were not
Speaker 1: able to pay them off after the stock market crash
Speaker 1: and after the bank failures and everything else. So the
Speaker 1: binder voice not only promoted the boom, they also helped
Speaker 1: end it. Let's talk about some of the you know,
Speaker 1: some of the things that characterized you called a boom,
Speaker 1: might call it a bubble. But in any boom, there's
Speaker 1: sort of glaring examples that in retrospect seems like people
Speaker 1: behaving completely irrationally. What were some of those things, like
Speaker 1: what were sort of the price jumps that we would
Speaker 1: see on a plot of land from first purchase to
Speaker 1: flip to the next flip and so on. Well, it
Speaker 1: would go out dramatically. As I said, the hundred sixty
Speaker 1: acre homesteads were basically free. I think it costs about
Speaker 1: fifteen dollars to apply, and so a lot of the
Speaker 1: land began as homesteads and then it was subdivided and
Speaker 1: sold off, so the price increases the exorbitant to the
Speaker 1: owner in the beginning, and as the boom grass, the
Speaker 1: prices kept going up up up, I mean in the
Speaker 1: cables that was particularly true. Uh George Merrick wanted to
Speaker 1: build beauty for the middle class. Uh and not he
Speaker 1: did not start out building this grand fancy pan subdivision.
Speaker 1: That only happened because it was so popular and people
Speaker 1: kept paying more and more and more. The Binder Boys
Speaker 1: they became so prevalent that they had to be like
Speaker 1: they were like just selling out on the sidewalk and
Speaker 1: selling out on the street everywhere, and they actually had
Speaker 1: to pass ordinances to sort of get them indoors so
Speaker 1: that people could get through the streets. Like how crazy
Speaker 1: and frenzy did the Bonder Boys phenomenon guests well, the
Speaker 1: downtown Miami eras where the Bonder Boys would solve the streets.
Speaker 1: And if you look at some of the pictures all
Speaker 1: the many of the first high rise buildings in Miami
Speaker 1: were built in this era too, So some of the
Speaker 1: early pictures of downtown Miami, the streets are just full
Speaker 1: of people and the sky is full of medals. You know,
Speaker 1: skyscrapers going up. So it was an incredible period of
Speaker 1: time and people as I grew up bunch later than that,
Speaker 1: but my people were still talking about dull boom and
Speaker 1: everybody knew they were talking about the nineteen and they
Speaker 1: were literally when you say the streets were filled with people,
Speaker 1: is literally people coming down from the rest of the
Speaker 1: country on the streets meeting up with the Binder boys
Speaker 1: and making real estate transactions right there and site unseen,
Speaker 1: like not really knowing anything about the real estate they
Speaker 1: were buying right something that was true. And there were
Speaker 1: busses though. George Berrick had a fleet of buses that
Speaker 1: brought people in even in from the north into Coral
Speaker 1: Gables to sell them. So he he tended to show
Speaker 1: them and he created He had a first professional landscape architect,
Speaker 1: Frank Button, did big plans and when you go into
Speaker 1: Coral Gables today, these plans are still intact. So even
Speaker 1: though George amery go we had eight years he planned,
Speaker 1: he had the first planned trimunity and uh, that's why
Speaker 1: it continues to be, you know, very valuable real estate
Speaker 1: today even though it lost everything there for a while.
Speaker 1: I like the anecdote that the binder boys, you know,
Speaker 1: when they would get paid a down payment on a property,
Speaker 1: it was all by check, so it would take them
Speaker 1: a while to get the actual money. So what they
Speaker 1: would do is they would take their um their binders
Speaker 1: over to hotels and restaurants and clubs and use those
Speaker 1: to get credit in the meantime until the check cleared.
Speaker 1: Kind of creates this nice image of the boom times
Speaker 1: and all these binder boys out partying in Miami with
Speaker 1: the money that they haven't yet received. It was a
Speaker 1: wild and crazy time, and uh there were nightclubs, and
Speaker 1: there were prohibition uh escape issies, even though prohibition you know,
Speaker 1: was in effect not very much an affection Miami. So
Speaker 1: I'm just curious, you know, when it came to the
Speaker 1: people who were actually buying the properties. Give us some sense.
Speaker 1: How many of them were in it because they were
Speaker 1: actually excited about the prospect of developing this previously unused land,
Speaker 1: and how many of them were in it just because
Speaker 1: they were looking to make a quick book. Well, I
Speaker 1: think there was plenty of each. It's hard to give
Speaker 1: exact numbers because some of the people that came down
Speaker 1: to make a quick book kind of fell in love
Speaker 1: with the area state, So a lot of or lost
Speaker 1: everything and had to stay. You had a combination of
Speaker 1: the two when the boom ended and after the hurricane. Say,
Speaker 1: there was this horrible hurricane in and that pretty much
Speaker 1: stopped the quote boom. Uh, it just proctly blew Miami away.
Speaker 1: But George Merrick continued to pour his money into Coral
Speaker 1: Gables after the hurricane. So you can't say that it
Speaker 1: completely stopped a lot of people, do I I disagree
Speaker 1: with that point of view. It really stopped in twenty
Speaker 1: eight and they literally threw George out of Coral Table
Speaker 1: and he lost everything he put, every study had and
Speaker 1: trying to keep it going after Okay, so the bust
Speaker 1: really came for sure by nine when the stock market
Speaker 1: crash you know, happened to and then that killed it off.
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit more about the
Speaker 1: bust in a second, but one thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: go back to. You mentioned that George Merrick at one
Speaker 1: point got his own fleet of buses to bring people
Speaker 1: down would be buyers. Something that I read is that
Speaker 1: at one point the craze to buy property in Florida
Speaker 1: got so intense that they actually had to limit the
Speaker 1: number of passengers who came in by rail and highway
Speaker 1: so that they could make room for food and other
Speaker 1: provisions to get into the state to feed the people
Speaker 1: that were actually there. Was getting so clugged? Am I
Speaker 1: remembering that correctly? Yes, you are. It's hard to even
Speaker 1: imagine today. We've never seen anything quite like za boom
Speaker 1: as as we call it. We've had the booms. In fact,
Speaker 1: I was born here and and I frequently say I've
Speaker 1: lived in maybe seven different Miamis because we've had a
Speaker 1: series of these quote booms or uh speculative period where
Speaker 1: we keep changing who we are. I like that. I
Speaker 1: like that idea that like the boom and bus cycle,
Speaker 1: is there just sort of almost definitional to uh, to
Speaker 1: what Florida is all about at this point? Absolutely, I
Speaker 1: would I would certainly agree to that. Particularly Miami. Ums
Speaker 1: has been so true here in my life. I've been
Speaker 1: through booms and bus Uh. I've watched it happen, you know,
Speaker 1: are before we move on to the trigger of the bust? Uh,
Speaker 1: what's your favorite anecdote from the boom period of this time?
Speaker 1: Is there one thing that sticks out in your mind? Well, um,
Speaker 1: you know that It's really hard because I've just known
Speaker 1: so much. I think the idea that that George had
Speaker 1: the Spanish theme, it's it's kind of ironic it today
Speaker 1: we have somebody Spanish speakers and the majority of people
Speaker 1: in Miami now or you know from from Latin America.
Speaker 1: This certainly was not true. We were mostly what everybody
Speaker 1: called crackers, which were the southerns who populated Miami prior
Speaker 1: to the boom and uh, the crackers were everything. And
Speaker 1: one of the quotes that was in the New York
Speaker 1: paper is the only thing lacking, uh in Coral Gables
Speaker 1: were the Spaniards themselves. And that's kind of ironic. What
Speaker 1: do you think about today? Because George named all the
Speaker 1: street names see after Spanish and then later Italian cities.
Speaker 1: So he saw the history. He was a history book.
Speaker 1: He saw the history of Florida. Were getting way back
Speaker 1: with postibly on as what we should be thinking about
Speaker 1: in that era. I see the boom town. So it's
Speaker 1: all very fascinating, honestly, and let's uh, let's talk about
Speaker 1: the bad stuff and how it eventually came to an end.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned the role that the six hurricane had.
Speaker 1: The hurricane didn't kill the market outright, but it was
Speaker 1: sort of the beginning of the end. How bad was
Speaker 1: the hurricane, like sort of put it in context and
Speaker 1: then talk about, you know, sort of the immediate hurricane
Speaker 1: aftermath for the market. Well, it's still it was down
Speaker 1: as one of the worst hurricanes in South Florida history.
Speaker 1: The hurricane was another one that was a lot of flooding.
Speaker 1: But the twenty six hurricane, and we in all our
Speaker 1: history say it really did stop the boom. Uh So
Speaker 1: we went into the great depression before the rest of
Speaker 1: the days we led. Our great depression began really in
Speaker 1: twenty six. And it was George uh that for his
Speaker 1: fortune he was today be a billionaire. He poured his
Speaker 1: fortune back into trying to keep the quote boom and
Speaker 1: keep corl Gables a lot. So when the three amount
Speaker 1: of eight, he didn't have anything. And when he died
Speaker 1: he was only fifty five. His estate was less than
Speaker 1: three or four hundred dollars. So that gives you the
Speaker 1: idea of how the boom killed people's personal money on
Speaker 1: the bus rather kills the personal fortune of most of
Speaker 1: the people that had come down during the boom. So
Speaker 1: what happened afterwards, because you know, if I think back
Speaker 1: to the most recent real estate boom that we had
Speaker 1: in the US, that would be just before two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: two thousand eight, um. The aftermath of that was, I
Speaker 1: mean incredibly emotional for many people. And you had lots
Speaker 1: of people who were kicked out of their house. But
Speaker 1: if a lot of the Florida properties were being bought
Speaker 1: for speculative use, uh, you know what happened. People just
Speaker 1: lost money or where their people sort of out on
Speaker 1: the street. In South Florida. Well, a lot of people
Speaker 1: did lose their homes. And there's some similarity between the
Speaker 1: speculatives booms of the nineteen twenties and and the other booms.
Speaker 1: A lot of people got the idea that they could
Speaker 1: make money on Florida real estate as so they purchased
Speaker 1: as as the prices went up, they continued to purchase,
Speaker 1: even with more expensive prices. And then when the next
Speaker 1: bust came and the prices dropped, they couldn't pay the
Speaker 1: mortgage and so they lost their homes, They lost their property.
Speaker 1: So it is definitely a pattern boom bus, boom bus,
Speaker 1: boom bus in Miami history. And so George Merrick, you said,
Speaker 1: he basically ended up broke. He was at one point
Speaker 1: the modern equivalent of a billionaire. He ended up with
Speaker 1: about four d dollars. The timing of the when people
Speaker 1: sort of declared in your mind the boom, as you
Speaker 1: call it, did it end with the stock market crash?
Speaker 1: Of did it end a little bit before that? When
Speaker 1: is the sort of period where you know you sort
Speaker 1: of book ends the boom, Well, it kind of ended
Speaker 1: with the hurricane of as far as most everybody but George,
Speaker 1: And as I said, he poured his his fortune into
Speaker 1: trying to keep Coral Gables going and he did not succeed.
Speaker 1: He ended up actually being postmaster. Uh. He applied of
Speaker 1: the reason very smart. He applied for the postmaster and
Speaker 1: got a job as Miami postmaster. And he was only
Speaker 1: fifty five when he died. So uh, it's a very
Speaker 1: sad story in a way. But when you look at
Speaker 1: Coral Gables today, his planning I was brilliant. And someone says,
Speaker 1: you don't need it define to tell you when you
Speaker 1: had a Coral Gables because of his planning that he
Speaker 1: did back in the nineteen twenties during the boom. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a quote that uh, I think it is right.
Speaker 1: I can't remember it exactly, but I read it somewhere
Speaker 1: recently and they were saying, like, the key to all
Speaker 1: bubble is you have to have a tremendous story that
Speaker 1: then just gets taken too far, but the fundamentals have
Speaker 1: to be really good. And what it sounds like, I
Speaker 1: think with Florida, and part of the reason he keeps
Speaker 1: coming back is that the fundamentals actually really are good.
Speaker 1: Like it is a very beautiful place. It's one of
Speaker 1: the some of the best weather in the entire country.
Speaker 1: The beaches are beautiful. As you mentioned, his community of
Speaker 1: Coral Gables was very well designed. So while it may
Speaker 1: have like gotten completely carried away and a bunch of
Speaker 1: people lost their heads with speculation, the key thing I
Speaker 1: think to go it seems to go back to is
Speaker 1: that the underlying fundamentals are in fact very strong and
Speaker 1: he was not wrong to be, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: selling what he was selling. No. I think that one
Speaker 1: of the major influences was a lot of vacant land.
Speaker 1: Um you know, people had not the railroad did not
Speaker 1: come down here until nine And you think about the
Speaker 1: rest of the nation up to uh and and there were.
Speaker 1: You know, when Miami was incorporated, there were three thirty
Speaker 1: people here in e in the city of Miami, so
Speaker 1: it started booming. The railroad created maybe one of the
Speaker 1: first booms when it got here, and then it just
Speaker 1: kept continuing. It's just a history of boom and buff Joe.
Speaker 1: I think that's a nice place to leave it. I
Speaker 1: think that is a perfect place to leave it. I
Speaker 1: love I'm really glad you brought in the railroads there
Speaker 1: at the end, because I do think that you know
Speaker 1: that that's sort of a constant theme with bubbles, is
Speaker 1: some new technology or to enable the sort of capital
Speaker 1: to flow, and obviously the railroad being a key source
Speaker 1: of capital from the rest of the country, are of
Speaker 1: a more parks. It was delightful to talk to you,
Speaker 1: so great to get your perspective, and uh, I really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Well, I'm glad you're doing this because people
Speaker 1: need to understand that we're the capital booms. I guess
Speaker 1: I love that boom capital of the world. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much. Thank you. I don't know about you, Tracy,
Speaker 1: but I really like talking to our just now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta say I feel like I know a lot
Speaker 1: more about Florida than I did when I started this podcast.
Speaker 1: But I thought the point that you were just making
Speaker 1: towards the end that you know, fundamentally there has to
Speaker 1: be a story to justify every bubble. I think that's
Speaker 1: a really important one. And you can see it in Florida.
Speaker 1: You know, you had the advent of the cars, so
Speaker 1: people could actually drive down to Florida and see the
Speaker 1: beautiful weather and you know, the coconut trees or the
Speaker 1: orange trees or whatever. Uh. You had a bunch of
Speaker 1: people who were becoming newly wealthy and had lots of
Speaker 1: leisure time to take vacations. Uh, and you could see
Speaker 1: why they would be interested in Florida real estate. No, absolutely,
Speaker 1: like every you know, it's like you sort of sell
Speaker 1: Florida as this wonderful paradise within the US. But the
Speaker 1: truth is it kind of is like it's beautiful and
Speaker 1: great beaches and now especially today, now that air conditioning
Speaker 1: is widespread, it's very uh, very comfortable to be in
Speaker 1: and so yeah, people got carried away, obviously, but the
Speaker 1: fundamentals are pretty great. And you know, I remember last
Speaker 1: week we're talking to Scott Nations, uh and he about
Speaker 1: stock market bubble is and one of the things said
Speaker 1: is that each stock market bubble kind of has a
Speaker 1: new financial contraption. So whether it's portfolio insurance in the
Speaker 1: eighties or the trust funds of the nineties twenties, and so,
Speaker 1: you know, you think about the new technologies that we're
Speaker 1: emerging for real estate, whether it's the emergence of these
Speaker 1: down payments, these binders, the trains, the broad people, and
Speaker 1: it's sort of similar themes across all bubbles. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's right. And also the network of salesmanship that
Speaker 1: went into this, right, you had the newspaper advertisements, Uh,
Speaker 1: you had who was that guy at William William Jennings Bryan.
Speaker 1: That's one of my favorite little nuggets. Because everybody knows
Speaker 1: the Cross of Gold speech, everybody knows the trial over
Speaker 1: the teacher who taught evolution that they made that play about.
Speaker 1: But the fact that as part of his career, one
Speaker 1: of the things he did was go to Florida and
Speaker 1: hawk real estate during the twenties. I think it's probably
Speaker 1: something that a nobody knows, but be really fits into
Speaker 1: the road or theme that if you can preach religion
Speaker 1: really well, you could probably sell property as well, do
Speaker 1: you think many of the bankers around nowadays selling E.
Speaker 1: T F and things? I think they have experienced in preaching.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but probably they should consider recruiting from churches.
Speaker 1: You know that there may be an untapped market of
Speaker 1: potentially good salesman out there, so maybe there's a future
Speaker 1: lesson for them. All right, Uh shall we end up?
Speaker 1: Let's do it there. We have more episodes in our
Speaker 1: Bubbles series coming up and you'll have to ah, stay
Speaker 1: tuned to find out what they are. I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway, and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisn't All. You could follow me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at the Stalwart and you can follow our producer Sarah
Speaker 1: Patterson on Twitter at Sarah pett with two teams. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.