Final answer:
Wall Street investors initially welcomed brands as valuable entities with speculation leading to prosperity, but this turned into panic during crashes, like Black Tuesday in 1929. Criticism of wealth disparity and corporate influence followed, with patterns repeating in financial crises like 2007-2008.
Step-by-step explanation:
Wall Street Reaction to Brands as Legal Entities
When brands started to be recognized as legal entities worth real money, Wall Street investors showed a varied response. Initially, there was a speculative boom, where many investors eagerly bought into the stock market, enticed by rising stock prices and corporate profits. During the 1920s, this led to a period of great prosperity, and the investment firms prospered by selling stocks to a growing middle-class population. However, over-speculation eventually led to market saturation, where there were not enough new investors to sustain the buying, causing stock prices to fall and leading to panic and crashes.
The most notorious crash occurred on October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday, where nearly three million shares of stock were traded in the first three minutes alone, wiping out significant amounts of wealth. In the aftermath of crashes, there was typically a public outcry against the speculative practices and the perceived unfairness of bailouts for the wealthy while the general populace suffered.
Criticism of Wall Street increased as figures like Michael Milken earned vast sums through commission-based transactions and leveraged buyouts, irrespective of the consequences for the economy or the workers. The disparity in wealth, influence of corporations on politics, and the advent of corporate personhood eventually led to populist anger. These trends have repeated throughout history, notably during the financial crisis of 2007-2008, where similar patterns of massive profits followed by catastrophic losses and federal bailouts emerged.