On a cold New York morning in 1929, Joseph Kennedy, the prominent millionaire and father of future U.S. President John F. Kennedy, was on his way to his Wall Street office when he stopped to have his shoes shined by a young boy. As the boy worked diligently, he suddenly looked up and said confidently, like a grown man, “Did you buy Ford’s stocks? Everyone is buying them. They say the price is going to soar this week.” Kennedy didn’t reply. He didn’t smile, scoff, or even ask the boy where he got his information.
Instead, a thought struck him, “When the shoeshine boy starts giving stock tips, it is a sign that the madness has reached its peak. The market is no longer ruled by logic, but it has become a herd blindly rushing toward the edge.” Kennedy returned to his office and immediately began selling off all his stocks, quietly withdrawing from the market. Just a few weeks later, on October 29, 1929 - Black Tuesday- the stock market crashed. Millions lost everything. Banks collapsed. Businessmen and investors leapt from office windows to escape the shame.
It marked the start of the Great Depression, plunging America and the world into a decade of economic darkness. Only Kennedy avoided the massive losses because he had recognized the warning signs early. This widely shared story on social media has no basis in fact. The name of the millionaire changes from one version to another. Sometimes it is Rockefeller, other times Vanderbilt. In truth, Joseph Kennedy wasn’t even a prominent trader on the New York Stock Exchange at the time. Yet nearly a century later, the same scene keeps repeating, and still, no one learns. Such is human nature. The pattern persists, though it often takes new forms.
The shoeshine boy has now become a former actor, a self-proclaimed “stock expert,” or even a preacher, once offering marital advice, now promoting grand ventures and promises of quick and easy wealth through minimal investment. Today, addicts of platforms like X (Twitter), Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Facebook have turned into “experts” in countless fields. They no longer carry shoeshine kits, but they wield social media accounts, dispensing opinions on everything from pharmaceuticals and health food to investments, politics, and religion. Each offers their own spin, justifying what they like, condemning what they don’t, and there are always people ready to believe them, follow their guidance, or be captivated by their words.
Millions of minds have become idle, captive to any charlatan or extremist, even if that person leads them to ruin. Logic, reason, and critical thinking are commodities these people have never learned to value, not at school, not at home, and not in the streets. And so, collapse becomes inevitable. The herd marches steadily toward its doom. The clearest sign? Israel’s unrestrained aggression, met with silence from a 1.5 billion-strong Muslim world, as if it is none of their concern, unaware that their turn will come, just as the white bull was devoured before them.
By Ahmad alsarraf
email: a.alsarraf@alqabas. com.kw
