by giving investors confidence in the decisionsthey were making.The early 1930s were a time of serious deflation and federal price supports wereput into place to attempt to stop the downward spiral. The plan was to use "codes of faircompetition" to steady prices for products make by different companies in similarindustries. The codes didn't work well for many reasons. Organizing product lines wasdifficult, the disparate cost structures of the big firms compared to small firms, and thedifficulty of setting prices that everyone would consider to be fair were all problemsfaced. Even when agreements were made opportunities for evading the codes werepresent....
