Nothing New Going On

The character in one of B Traven's novels uses his understanding of the business cycle to achieve a goal and in doing so Traven describes this age old cycle:

"The speed-up of production and the slow-down in delivery played so quietly, gradually and cleverly that not even the sharpest coal competitor dreamed that an historic manoeuvre was going on under their very noses, for this was during months of flush, bored-with-business boom-time, which usually precedes the dawn of a real depression, though rarely apprehended and correctly analysed by busy bankers and aggressive corporations; and if a few clever financial commentators do predict it, they are damned as defeatists, or, worse, as unpatriotic prophets.
And thus,on a quiet business day when all was rosy as a May-time sunset a crash was heard. Just a little one.
But the crash was exactly as hard and as heavy as Collins had predicted it would be, during his many months of cunning preparation.
At first, the blow did not jar the world of big business, for it didn't hurt big business. It was a local blow; it was like tossing a nut of coal onto a slumbering giant, and watching him wake up, yawning contentedly from his sweet dreams of extra dividends.
No hurry. Nobody hurt. The giant isn't angry, for he doesn't even know who or what ended his sleep. But any man with a good nose and a sharp eye could smell a storm coming up. And some of them said so. Perhaps five sharp financial commentators smelt it, and perhaps one of each thousand among millions of readers believed them, and picked up their profits and got out while the going was good, leaving the multitudes of investors to continue adding up their "margin assets" and paper-profits."

(The White Rose, B Traven, 1931)