That is a good point, crashes are going to happen, and what occurs afterward is what counts the most. I think what everyone still living can observe is what di

That is a good point, crashes are going to happen, and what occurs afterward is what counts the most. I think what everyone still living can observe is what did actually happen after each crash, using after-the-fact well-curated data having good-to-moderate degrees of provenance. Going back to 1929, very little first-hand observation from before the crash is still available, and most people at the time didn't understand the implications either. When I was growning up though, my neighborhood was crowded by people from all walks of life who had been through it, before, during, and after. I would say many of their experiences have been unpublished probably because lots of them were "unpublishable." With 1973, I had already been a teenage stockbroker well before that and I remember it well. The Nixon shitshow had been building for years. Presidential malfeasance can do damage like few other things, even worse when it's a US President which puts the dollar itself at stake. So my observation is what happens before the crash has more influence on what happens afterward, compared to the steepness of the crash itself.