Key ideas from Andrew Ross Sorkin

• RCA stock fell from multi-hundred dollars to $3 within three years after the 1929 crash, yet 30-year returns from 1929 still averaged 6-7% annually
• Charles Merrill told people to exit stocks in early 1928, missing a 90% gain before the October 1929 crash - 'what a mistake that was' - Sorkin
• John Raskob was 'the Elon Musk of his time' who built the Empire State Building and proposed the five-day workweek in November 1929
• Glass-Steagall was 'corrupted' - parts were written by Rockefeller family members to target J.P. Morgan, not from pure regulatory motives
• Private credit now represents 80% of lending versus 20% for traditional banks, creating a 'shadow banking system' with unknown risks
• The Fed was never truly independent - board members in the 1920s worried about being 'hauled up in front of Congress' for policy decisions
• Consumer debt culture began in 1919 when GM's John Raskob created car loans - before then 'you were the dregs of the universe if you were a debt holder'
• Sorkin's wife has banned him from writing another book until their three children go to college, though he's plotting a tulip mania story