52 The Stock Market Crash—dAnd After
In this remark Senator Nye was merely reflecting
 the impression of many in assuming that there
was only so much credit to go around and that Wall
Street was making money scarce and dear for business.
 Those who held this view ignored the fact
that bank reserves were high and that the “tight
money” policy of the Federal Reserve System might
at any time have been revised.

“Boom” Enthusiasm
Senator Robinson of Arkansas declared, and with
some real basis in fact, in a formal statement on
October 30, 1929, that if the foundation of the
belief of ruined investors was faith in the strong
position of American industry, it was also true that
“no less personalities than a former President of
the United States, the Secretary of the Treasury,
and the former Secretary of Commerce, now President,
 contributed by unduly and repeated optimistic
statements to the creation of enthusiastic if not
frenzied ventures in stocks.”
No doubt the “Coolidge boom" and the “Hoover
boom” engendered such public enthusiasm, accompanied
 as they were by repeated statements of the
country’s prosperity and expected increases in prosperity.
 These statements led thousands of investors
into undue borrowings in order to realize the benefits
 of this prosperity for themselves. But I cannot
entirely agree with Professor Jacob H. Hollander,
of Johns Hopkins University, in his view, expressed
before the Academy of Political Science in New