Wall Street may be heading toward a 1929-style stock market crash — as inflated share prices, speculative bubbles and eroding financial safeguards feel eerily similar to the eve of the Great Depression, according to a financial journalist.
Andrew Ross Sorkin, who co-hosts CNBC’s “Squawk Box” and founded the New York Times’ DealBook newsletter, told CBS News’ “60 Minutes” that he was “anxious” about the markets possibly being on the verge of a catastrophic meltdown.
Sorkin, the author of a new book about the 1929 crash, compared today’s booming, AI-driven market to that of the “Roaring Twenties” that collapsed nearly a century ago.
“The crazy part about this is, from 1928 to September of 1929, the stock market was up 90%,” Sorkin said.
“I’m anxious — I’m anxious that we are at prices that may not feel sustainable. We are either living through some kind of remarkable boom … or everything’s overpriced.”
When “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl said, “Or we’re reliving…,” Sorkin added, “1929.”
The stock market has delivered strong double-digit gains over the past year, with the S&P 500 up about 13% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising 9% through October.
Despite brief volatility tied to political and trade tensions, both indexes hit multiple record highs in 2025, led by surging technology stocks.
Sorkin said that while technology and artificial intelligence are fueling legitimate innovation, the rush of investor money pouring into AI companies feels like a classic speculative bubble.
“I think it’s hard to say we’re not in a bubble of some sort,” he said.
“I would argue to you that the economy is being propped up almost artificially by the artificial intelligence boom.”
According to Sorkin, hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested today in artificial intelligence.
“This is either a gold rush or a sugar rush — and we probably won’t know for a couple of years which one it is,” he said.
The journalist, who has covered financial markets for two decades, said he sees unsettling parallels between today’s economy and the debt-fueled speculation that preceded the 1929 crash.
Back then, he noted, ordinary Americans were drawn into the market through easy credit and promises of “democratized” access to wealth.
Sorkin said modern investors are being tempted in similar ways — through private markets, venture capital, and lightly regulated startups where risk is disguised as opportunity.
“It’s not that we’re going off a cliff tomorrow,” Sorkin said. “It’s that there’s speculation in the market today. There’s an increasing amount of debt in the market today.”
Sorkin added that “over the last 20 or 30 years, folks who had access — who could invest in private equity and venture capital — clearly outperformed those who didn’t.”
He warned that the post-1929 protections designed to prevent mass speculation — such as SEC disclosure rules and consumer protection agencies — are “tumbling down.”
“The Consumer Protection Bureau practically doesn’t exist anymore. That’s what concerns me,” Sorkin said.
Sorkin said the drive to “democratize” investing — by opening riskier private markets to small investors — could backfire.
“There’s a view that it’s been only the elites who’ve had access to these investments — Facebook before it went public, Uber before it went public,” he said.
“There’s a real push, partially by the Trump administration and partially by the industry itself which wants to get more money in, to open up the market to more and more people,” Sorkin said.
While the “guardrails” have protected “a lot of people,” some would say “they protected people from getting rich,” Sorkin said.
The Post has sought comment from the White House.
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