New York Times Opinion Piece: "Trump Is Pushing Us Toward a Crash. It Could Be 1929 All Over Again." Is William Birdthistle Right?

Summary of the Article A November 7, 2025, NYT opinion piece is written by William Birdthistle (a former SEC director and Chicago-Kent law professor).

Headline: "Trump Is Pushing Us Toward a Crash. It Could Be 1929 All Over Again."Core argument in one sentence: "The 2020s are rhyming with the 1920s-post-pandemic boom, easy credit, retail speculation, crypto scams, and now a president who wants to gut the SEC. The hangover could be another Great Depression."

The 8 Parallels the Author ListsHe strings together eight "eerie" similarities. Here they are verbatim, with a quick reality-check:Post-pandemic party

✓ True: 1918 flu → 1920s boom; Covid → 2020s boom.

Installment credit / BNPL

✓ True: 1920s invented car loans; Klarna and Affirm are their grandchildren.

Interest rates ~5 %

✓ True in both eras (Fed funds today 4.75–5 %).

Retail investors flood the casino

✓ Women's share of trading: 1919 <2 % → 1929 35 % (author's cite).

✓ Today: Robinhood, Reddit, options gambling on phones.

Market tripled in 3 years

✗ Misleading. S&P 500 from Nov 2022 low to Nov 2025 high is +100 %, not 300 %. The 1920s took nine years to rise six-fold.

No cops on the beat

✓ SEC is down two commissioners and 16 % of staff; CFTC has one member.

✓ 1920s had zero federal securities cops.

Ponzi then, rug-pull now

✓ Charles Ponzi 1920; Sam Bankman-Fried 2022.

Gatsby's bond salesman = today's Robinhood broker

Literary flourish, not a fact.

The Big Leap: "1929 All Over Again"The author's money quote: "It Could Be 1929 All Over Again."

He never actually writes the word "depression"; he just flashes the 77 % market crash, 25 % unemployment, and 1932 suicide spike to scare you.What He Conveniently IgnoresThe Fed in 1929 tightened money and let banks fail.

Today the Fed is data-driven and has a 2 % inflation mandate.

1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs (60 %) crushed global trade.

Trump's threatened tariffs are 10–20 % + 60 % on China-bad, but not 1930-bad.

Banks in 1929 had no deposit insurance. Today: FDIC.

1929 had the gold standard; we have fiat money and QE.

The Author's Own Caveat (buried in paragraph 14)"Four years ago Robert Shiller warned the market was lofty but said there was 'no particular reason' to expect a 1929-style collapse because 'the government and the Fed have shown themselves far more adept...'"

In other words, even the Nobel laureate he quotes disagrees with the headline.Bottom LineThe piece is classic fear-click opinion, not reporting. 60 % of the parallels are real and fun trivia.

40 % are stretched (market-growth math) or literary.

The prediction is pure 1920s cosplay: slap a flapper dress on 2025 and scream "crash!"

We could get a nasty 20–30 % correction if tariffs spark inflation and the Fed slams the brakes.

But a Great Depression 2.0 would require the Fed and Congress to deliberately copy every 1930s mistake. They know the playbook; they're not that dumb.Verdict: The article is rhetorically clever, factually selective, and alarmist. Treat it like a spooky Gatsby party-fun to read, zero reason to sell your stocks tomorrow.