From the mid 19th century the French stock exchange was based in the Palais de la Bourse, in the heart of Paris. Some 60 agents de change – official stockbrokers – operated here in a syndicate. There was a common fund which any of them could dip into to cover temporary trading losses, thus providing …
On Friday September 24 1869 Wall Street was paying close attention to the price of gold. In the previous three weeks it had been rising rapidly and brokers were getting jittery, though that hadn’t stopped them from investing. Suddenly the price started to fall… and didn’t stop. In under 15 minutes, the price per ounce …
Mid-Victorian global economics evolved under the ever-increasing arch of the British Empire. The City of London was the Empire’s engine-room, fuelled by expanding colonial trade; but by the 1860s entrepreneurial confidence was replaced by opportunistic greed. Tennyson, Trollope and Dickens were among the great literary figures who fulminated against what Thomas Carlyle denounced as ‘Cheap …
At the beginning of the 18th century Europe was in political chaos and by 1710, after a decade of war, the British government was millions of pounds in debt. Robert Harley, the Lord Treasurer, dreamed up a brilliant (if dishonest) financing scheme not unlike the French Mississippi Company. The South Sea Company was set up …
Early 18th-century France was in the economic doldrums. The government was drowning in debt and the Regent, the Duke d’Orleans, enlisted the aid of Scots adventurer John Law (1671-1729). Law was a financial wizard, a gambling man with grandiose ambitions. He had fled from Scotland after killing a duelling opponent and now sought to make …
In his authoritative work on the subject of human folly Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Victorian journalist Charles Mackay cited the Dutch mania for tulip bulbs as a perfect illustration of a speculative ‘bubble’. During the 1630s The Netherlands was gripped by a sort of national insanity. In retrospect, it was an …