The First Crash (ebook)

Argumento de The First Crash (ebook)

"Richard Dale . . . picks a scholarly but readable path through the events that led to the collapse of shares in the infamous South Sea Company in 1720. Only the purblind could fail to draw some important parallels between the events of that year and the bubbles of the more recent past, not least the dot.com mania of five years ago."--Jonathan Davis, The Independent

"In this gripping tale of the South Sea scam, Richard Dale describes personal and corporate greed, creative accounting, and financial malpractice. He writes about events from three centuries ago, but his analysis is relevant to today's investors, traders, and policymakers."--Elroy Dimson, London Business School, author of Triumph of the Optimists

"This book represents an important piece of new scholarship focused almost exclusively on the South Sea Bubble. The author's tireless research yields a wonderful historical document that brings the reader into the center of financial markets in the early 1700s, and then reveals much about the South Sea Bubble that has previously gone undetected. Dale's work brings so much new evidence, and interweaves it with the old so skillfully, that The First Crash will certainly become a must read for scholars and is likely to be relied upon heavily in university classes as well. The author is to be congratulated."--Kevin Hassett, American Enterprise Institute, author of Bubbleology

"This extremely useful contribution to the field serves to remind nonhistorians, and particularly most financial economists, that almost all of what is thought of as modern financial analysis today was available 300 years ago."--Forrest Capie, City University Business School, London, author of Depression and Protectionism0Introduction 1
Chapter One: Coffee Houses, The Press and Misinformation 7
Chapter Two: Exchange Alley and the Evolution of London's Securities Market 22
Chapter Three: Origins of the South Sea Company 40
Chapter Four: John Law and the Mississippi Bubble 56
Chapter Five: The South Sea Scheme 73
Chapter Six: The Bubble 96
Chapter Seven: The Crash 125
Chapter Eight: Crisis Resolution 140
Chapter Nine: Lessons from the South Sea Bubble 155
Appendix I: Hutcheson's South Sea Parable 171
Appendix II: Technical Note on Stock and Subscription Price Data 172
Chapter Ten: Conclusion 178
Glossary 185
Bibliography 187
Index 195