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Based on eight years of continued prosperity, presidents and economists alike confidently predicted that America would soon enter a time when there would be no more poverty, no more depressions -- a "New Era" when everyone could be rich. But when reality finally struck, the consequences of such unbound optimism shocked the world.
Directed by Ellen Giffard

Philip Bosco
Narrator

Reuben L. Cain
Self

William C. Durant
Self (archive footage)

Thomas A. Edison
Self (archive footage)

Henry Ford
Self (archive footage)

Herbert Hoover
Self (archive footage)

John Kenneth Galbraith

J. P. Morgan
Self (archive footage)

Robert Sobel
Self

William Howard Taft
Self (archive footage)

Calvin Coolidge
Self (archive footage)
Ulysses S. Grant
2002