In loving, living memory, John Melançon 1928 – 2007
Dad told me more than once, in a times-have-changed-for-the-worse manner:
When the stock market crashed in 1929, reporters at the Boston Globe cheered.
When it falls now [in specific reference to a 1970s or 1980s drop, I think] it is like a funeral.
I tried to point out that the aftermath of that stock market crash of 1929 was the Great Depression – the most recent big one of many in U.S. history, actually – and it hurt a lot more than just the rich.
http://www.candorville.com/wordpress/2007/08/25/stocksdown/
This was Dad's view.