Author: Anne Goldgar
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226301303
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 458
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Book Description
In the 1630s the Netherlands was gripped by tulipmania: a speculative fever unprecedented in scale and, as popular history would have it, folly. We all know the outline of the story—how otherwise sensible merchants, nobles, and artisans spent all they had (and much that they didn’t) on tulip bulbs. We have heard how these bulbs changed hands hundreds of times in a single day, and how some bulbs, sold and resold for thousands of guilders, never even existed. Tulipmania is seen as an example of the gullibility of crowds and the dangers of financial speculation. But it wasn’t like that. As Anne Goldgar reveals in Tulipmania, not one of these stories is true. Making use of extensive archival research, she lays waste to the legends, revealing that while the 1630s did see a speculative bubble in tulip prices, neither the height of the bubble nor its bursting were anywhere near as dramatic as we tend to think. By clearing away the accumulated myths, Goldgar is able to show us instead the far more interesting reality: the ways in which tulipmania reflected deep anxieties about the transformation of Dutch society in the Golden Age. “Goldgar tells us at the start of her excellent debunking book: ‘Most of what we have heard of [tulipmania] is not true.’. . . She tells a new story.”—Simon Kuper, Financial Times
Author: Peter M. Garber
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262571531
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 180
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Book Description
The jargon of economics and finance contains numerous colorful terms for market-asset prices at odds with any reasonable economic explanation. Examples include "bubble," "tulipmania," "chain letter," "Ponzi scheme," "panic," "crash," "herding," and "irrational exuberance." Although such a term suggests that an event is inexplicably crowd-driven, what it really means, claims Peter Garber, is that we have grasped a near-empty explanation rather than expend the effort to understand the event. In this book Garber offers market-fundamental explanations for the three most famous bubbles: the Dutch Tulipmania (1634-1637), the Mississippi Bubble (1719-1720), and the closely connected South Sea Bubble (1720). He focuses most closely on the Tulipmania because it is the event that most modern observers view as clearly crazy. Comparing the pattern of price declines for initially rare eighteenth-century bulbs to that of seventeenth-century bulbs, he concludes that the extremely high prices for rare bulbs and their rapid decline reflects normal pricing behavior. In the cases of the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles, he describes the asset markets and financial manipulations involved in these episodes and casts them as market fundamentals.
Author: Mike Dash
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 178022057X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279
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Book Description
'A fascinating exploration of human greed and self-delusion and also a tribute to our ageless search for beauty' DEBORAH MOGGACH. In 1630s' Holland thousands of people, from the wealthiest merchants to the lowest street traders, were caught up in a frenzy of buying and selling. The object of the speculation was not oil or gold, but the tulip, a delicate and exotic bloom that had just arrived from the east. Over three years, rare tulip bulbs changed hands for sums that would have bought a house in Amsterdam: a single bulb could sell for more than £300,000 at today's prices. Fortunes were made overnight, but then lost when, within a year, the market collapsed. Mike Dash recreates this bizarre episode in European history, separating myth from reality. He traces the hysterical boom and devastating bust, bringing to life a colourful cast of characters, and beautifully evoking Holland's Golden Age.
Author:
Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute
ISBN: 1610164555
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 147
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Book Description
The Housing Bubble was hardly the first in human history. What's eluded historians is the same issue that eludes commentators today: the underlying cause of bubbles. This book is the first (and only) book to solve the mystery of the most famous bubble in world history: Tulipmania in 17th century Netherlands. It Is a legendary event but explanations have been lacking. People blame irrational exuberance, free markets, and an unleashed aristocracy. Douglas French takes a different route: he follows the money to prove that the bubble resulted from a government intervention that dramatically exploded the money supply and fueled the tulip-price bubble – not altogether different from modern bubbles. This book was French’s Master’s thesis written under the direction of Murray Rothbard and examining three of the most famous speculative bubble episodes in history through the lens of Austrian Business Cycle Theory. Although each of these episodes is well documented, this book examines the monetary interventions that engendered each of these events showing that not only the Mississippi Bubble and the South Sea Bubble were caused by government meddling, but Tulipmania was as well. Tulipmania was unique in that it was the sound money policy of the Dutch combined with free coinage laws that led to an acute increase in the supply of money and fostered an atmosphere that was ripe for speculation and malinvestment, manifesting itself in the intense trading of tulip bulbs. The author examines not only the Mississippi Bubble but also the life and monetary theories of its architect, John Law. Professor Joe Salerno calls Law the world’s first macroeconomist who implemented a Keynesian monetary system in France nearly two hundred years before Keynes was born. At the same time across the English Channel, a nearly bankrupt British government looked on with envy at Law’s system, believing that he was working a financial miracle. It was anything but this and investors in both countries were devastated. Although these episodes occurred centuries ago, readers will find the events eerily similar to today’s bubbles and busts: low interest rates, easy credit terms, widespread public participation, bankrupt governments, price inflation, frantic attempts by government to keep the booms going, and government bailouts of companies after the crash. When will we learn? We first have to get cause and effect in history straight. This book is an excellent contribution to that effort.
Author: Deborah Moggach
Publisher: Dial Press
ISBN: 0307423417
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
A sensual tale of art, lust, and deception—now a major motion picture In 1630s Amsterdam, tulipomania has seized the populace. Everywhere men are seduced by the fantastic exotic flower. But for wealthy merchant Cornelis Sandvoort, it is his young and beautiful wife, Sophia, who stirs his soul. She is the prize he desires, the woman he hopes will bring him the joy that not even his considerable fortune can buy. Cornelis yearns for an heir, but so far he and Sophia have failed to produce one. In a bid for immortality, he commissions a portrait of them both by the talented young painter Jan van Loos. But as Van Loos begins to capture Sophia's likeness on canvas, a slow passion begins to burn between the beautiful young wife and the talented artist. As the portrait unfolds, so a slow dance is begun among the household’s inhabitants. Ambitions, desires, and dreams breed a grand deception—and as the lies multiply, events move toward a thrilling and tragic climax. In this richly imagined international bestseller, Deborah Moggach has created the rarest of novels—a lush, lyrical work of fiction that is also compulsively readable. Seldom has a novel so vividly evoked a time, a place, and a passion. Praise for Tulip Fever “Sumptuous prose . . . reads like a thriller.”—The New York Times Book Review “An artful novel in every sense of the word . . . deftly evokes seventeenth-century Amsterdam’s vibrant atmosphere.”—Los Angeles Times “Need a brief escape into a beautiful and faraway world? Deborah Moggach’s wonderful Tulip Fever can offer you that.”—New York Post “Taut with suspense and unexpected revelations.”—Entertainment Weekly “Elegantly absorbing.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
Author: Peter M. Garber
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Speculation
Languages : en
Pages : 76
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Book Description
Author: Charles River Charles River Editors
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781721938964
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 92
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Book Description
*Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading If one were to glide over the Dutch countryside via helicopter in the springtime, the beauty below them would seem almost surreal. The rolling rectangular fields are composed of immaculately neat, horizontal stripes in vibrant swatches of scarlet, pink, lavender, cream-white, and midnight-blue. The ethereal sight is even more breathtaking when one takes a stroll along these fields, surrounded by endless carpets of bright color. These world-famous three-petal, three-sepal flowers, all craning their necks towards the dazzling sun, are none other than Dutch tulips. The Netherlands is now the world's leading commercial producer of tulips, shipping out more than 3 billion of these colorful beauties each year. Standard tulips, depending on where one is based, typically sell for anywhere between $1.00 to $3.50 USD per stem today. They are a creative alternative to roses, lilies, and other traditional flowers. Needless to say, like every other floral breed, special tulips - such as hybrids, or ones with unique, multi-colored streaks and patterns - will cost buyers a pretty penny, but a bouquet is certainly not going to break the bank. Legend has it, however, that this was not always the case. As a matter of fact, these delightful "harbingers of spring" were supposedly once so rabidly sought-after that it wasn't just more valuable than gold - men threw themselves into financial ruin all for the sake of attaining just one of these sacred flowers. At the crescendo of what is now remembered as "Tulip Mania," or the "Tulip Craze," a single, shallot-like bulb of an unripe tulip was worth 20 times the annual salary of a skilled laborer. This aggressively volatile period, marked by convoluted and careless market speculation, inevitably culminated in the disastrous bursting of one of the world's first financial bubbles, an example of the perils of herd mentality. But how much truth is there to this oft-repeated story of the Tulpenmanie, really? Tulip Mania: The History and Legacy of the World's First Speculative Bubble during the Dutch Golden Age analyzes the legendary mania, and whether it was as dramatic as portrayed. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Tulip Mania like never before.
Author: Deborah Noyes
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 9780763618759
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40
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Book Description
A little girl seeks to regain her father's attention during the tulipomania craze in seventeenth-century Holland.
Author: David E. Y. Sarna
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470877707
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 418
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Book Description
The “greater fool” theory of economics states that it’s possible to make money by buying paper (securities), whether overvalued or not, and later, selling it at a profit because there will always be an even greater fool willing to pay the higher price. Many described in this book profited by peddling such worthless junk to foolish investors. But for some people—Bernie Madoff, Norman Hsu, Sholam Weiss, and “Crazie Eddie” Antar, aka the “Darth Vader of Capitalism”—overvalued securities were not enough. Outright fraud was their way of life. History of Greed is the compelling inside story of the names you know—Charles Ponzi, Baron Rothschild, Lou Pearlman—and the names you don’t—Isaac Le Maire, the world’s first “naked” short-seller. It’s also our story—why we ignore the lessons of the past and fall prey, most every time, to the promise of easy money. For thousands of years, alchemists unsuccessfully tried to turn worthless base metals into gold. Where science failed at turning nothing into something, business succeeded. Sometimes we praise the creators of derivatives, collateral debt obligations, subprime mortgages, credit default swaps, or auction rate securities as Wall Street’s new financial wizards, the creators of “magic paper.” Other times, we vilify and prosecute them as scam artists. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell who is who. History of Greed reveals the inside secrets of how the markets really work, and how scam artists abuse them to gain an unfair edge or to outright steal. It describes how luftgescheft (“air business”), wizardry, dishonesty, and fraud are used to swindle people. Along with a comprehensive bibliography, History of Greed also details: 400 years of financial fraud—from everyday fraud to the odd and unusual Accounting fraud (phantom sales), stock option fraud (backdating), auction rate securities, hedge fund fraud, Ponzi schemes, promotion fraud (pump-and-dump scams), and money laundering How to detect fraudulent schemes How government regulation only fixes yesterday’s problems If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. If they say you can’t lose, you probably will. History of Greed shows that there really is no such thing as a free lunch, while also detailing how not to become the “greater fool.”
Author: Michael Pollan
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0375760393
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
“Pollan shines a light on our own nature as well as on our implication in the natural world.” —The New York Times “A wry, informed pastoral.” —The New Yorker The book that helped make Michael Pollan, the New York Times bestselling author of How to Change Your Mind, Cooked and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, one of the most trusted food experts in America Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers’ genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?
