Key Takeaways
- • A cohort of prominent financiers is actively promoting private equity and cryptocurrency investments to retail and mass-affluent investors, echoing promotional tactics from the 1920s that preceded the 1929 crash.
- • The parallel drawn by financial historian Andrew Ross Sorkin centers on figures like Charles Mitchell (National City Bank/Citigroup predecessor) and John Raskob (GM executive, Empire State Building developer), who democratized access to speculative investment vehicles including margin loans, investment trusts, and exotic foreign bonds.
- • Mitchell and Raskob's philosophy—that complex financial instruments should be marketed like consumer products to ordinary savers—mirrors current efforts to mainstream alternative assets historically reserved for institutional and accredited investors.
- • The comparison raises systemic risk concerns about retail participation in illiquid, opaque asset classes (private equity, crypto) without equivalent regulatory guardrails or market transparency that govern public equities.
- • The article, published October 20, 2025, positions this trend as a cautionary historical precedent, questioning whether loosened investment rules and aggressive democratization of financial products could create conditions for significant market disruption.
Summary
Andrew Ross Sorkin, founder of DealBook and author of a newly published history of the 1929 crash, examines striking parallels between 1920s financial promotion and contemporary efforts to expand retail access to private equity and cryptocurrency. The core comparison centers on how investment professionals of the Roaring Twenties deliberately dismantled the mystique surrounding complex financial instruments to drive mass adoption.
Charles Mitchell, the aggressive leader of National City Bank (the predecessor to Citigroup), epitomized this approach. Mitchell held court at the Bankers Club overlooking Broadway, where he would pitch bond salesmen on the opportunity to reach millions of ordinary Americans with savings to deploy. His philosophy was explicit: "There is, and always has been, too much mystery connected with banking." He sought to strip away that opacity and sell stocks, margin loans, investment trusts, and foreign bonds with the same promotional intensity applied to consumer goods. This democratization was framed as economic opportunity.
John Raskob, a top General Motors executive and the developer of the Empire State Building, pushed the narrative further with his declaration that "Everybody ought to be rich!" Raskob created one of the first mutual funds explicitly designed to give working-class Americans—"the little fellows," in his terminology—access to equity market gains previously confined to wealthy investors. The vehicle was positioned as inclusion; the underlying mechanism was exposure to speculative, often illiquid securities.
The article draws an implicit warning: today's push to mainstream private equity and cryptocurrency to retail investors follows an identical playbook—removing institutional barriers, rebranding complexity as opportunity, and targeting ordinary savers with limited expertise in alternative assets. Unlike public equities, which operate within robust regulatory frameworks and transparent pricing, private equity and crypto remain subject to lighter disclosure requirements and wider information asymmetries. The 1920s precedent suggests that when such tactics precede market dislocations, the consequences can be severe, particularly for retail participants who entered late and lacked institutional protections.
Charles Mitchell, the aggressive leader of National City Bank (the predecessor to Citigroup), epitomized this approach. Mitchell held court at the Bankers Club overlooking Broadway, where he would pitch bond salesmen on the opportunity to reach millions of ordinary Americans with savings to deploy. His philosophy was explicit: "There is, and always has been, too much mystery connected with banking." He sought to strip away that opacity and sell stocks, margin loans, investment trusts, and foreign bonds with the same promotional intensity applied to consumer goods. This democratization was framed as economic opportunity.
John Raskob, a top General Motors executive and the developer of the Empire State Building, pushed the narrative further with his declaration that "Everybody ought to be rich!" Raskob created one of the first mutual funds explicitly designed to give working-class Americans—"the little fellows," in his terminology—access to equity market gains previously confined to wealthy investors. The vehicle was positioned as inclusion; the underlying mechanism was exposure to speculative, often illiquid securities.
The article draws an implicit warning: today's push to mainstream private equity and cryptocurrency to retail investors follows an identical playbook—removing institutional barriers, rebranding complexity as opportunity, and targeting ordinary savers with limited expertise in alternative assets. Unlike public equities, which operate within robust regulatory frameworks and transparent pricing, private equity and crypto remain subject to lighter disclosure requirements and wider information asymmetries. The 1920s precedent suggests that when such tactics precede market dislocations, the consequences can be severe, particularly for retail participants who entered late and lacked institutional protections.
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